Description:

• Trees or shrubs, without spines, erect or scrambling
• Leaves alternate or spiral, usually subsessile, entire or serrated; sometimes with latex; stipules free, small, soon deciduous
• Inflorescences pedunculate or sessile, monochasial or fasciculate, few-flowered, single in axils of foliage leaves or in clusters; bracts persistent
• Flowers bisexual
• Sepals (4)5, unequal or equal, imbricate, with margin entire or ciliolate
• Petals (4)5, imbricate in bud, spreading, longer than sepals, oblong to suborbicular, with margins entire, undulate or ciliate, white, yellow, green or red
• Disc intrastaminal, 5-10-lobed, angled or crenulate
• Stamens (4)5; filaments flattened, shorter than petals; anthers versatile or basifixed, introrse
• Ovary sessile, almost free or up to half immersed in disc, (1)2- or 3-locular, with 2 erect collateral ovules per locule; style usually short; stigma shortly (1)2- or 3-lobed
• Fruit a smooth or rugose capsule, without emergences, dehiscing loculicidally to base
• Seeds 1-6, glossy, subglobose, reddish brown, with complete or incomplete aril; with or without fleshy endosperm
• x = 9 (polyploidy)

Nomenclature:

• Maytenus Molina
  • Molina: 177 (1782)
  • Loesener: 138 (1942)
  • Blakelock: 237 (1956)
  • Marais: 381 (1960) in part
  • Robson: 358 (1966) in part
  • Sebsebe Demisew: 45 (1985) in part.
  • Sebsebe Demisew & Robson: 331 (1989) in part
  • Robson et al.: 3 (1994) in part
• Gymnosporia in sense of Davison
  • Davison: 290 (1927) in part

Distribution & Notes:

• Global: Species ± 150, mostly in tropics and subtropics of both hemispheres, widespread in the eastern parts of tropical and southern Africa
• Southern Africa: Species ± 11, widespread