Description:

• Unarmed evergreen or deciduous trees
• Leaves paripinnate or rarely subimparipinnate; leaflets opposite or subopposite, few-jugate; stipules minute, their basal parts connate into a persistent intra-petiolar scale and their upper parts free and deciduous
• Inflorescence simply racemose or of racemes grouped into panicles
• Flowers bisexual, irregular, spirally arranged along inflorescence axes; bracteoles large, well developed, concavo-convex, almost completely concealing young flower buds, one bracteole overlapping the other by its margins, both bracteoles deciduous before flower opens
• Calyx tube ± elongate; sepals 4, slightly unequal (2 outer, 2 inner), imbricate
• Petals 1, developed, clawed, orbicular or reniform, sometimes 2-lobed; others small or 0
• Stamens 3-8, free or shortly connate; anthers ovate; staminodes (0)2-4
• Ovary stalked, with stalk adnate to calyx tube, many-ovuled; style with truncate or subcapitate stigma
• Pod thick, woody or leathery, obliquely oblong, compressed, 2-valved or subindehiscent, with transverse septa between seeds
• Seeds ovoid or ellipsoid, large, with a large, basal, brightly coloured, cup-like aril
• x = 12

Nomenclature:

• Afzelia Sm.
  • Smith: 221 (1798) name conserved
  • Brenan: 124 (1967)
  • Ross: 40 (1977)

Distribution & Notes:

• Global: Species ± 14, fairly cosmopolitan in tropical areas
• Southern Africa: Species 1: Afzelia quanzensis Welw., Northern Province, Mpumalanga to N KwaZulu-Natal