Description:

• Evergreen, rarely deciduous, shrubs or trees, unarmed, sparingly to densely pubescent; bark without yellow pigment, greyish to dark brown, surface smooth to longitudinally and transversely fissured; fissures often cutting deep into bark
• Branchlets terete, smooth, usually pubescent, becoming greyish brown
• Leaves alternate, coriaceous, margin glandular-crenate to glandular-crenulate, crenations 10-18 on either side; petiolate; stipules minute, ± triangular, pubescent, occasionally becoming glabrous, marcescent
• Inflorescences sessile to pedunculate, composed of fasciculate cymes, axillary, 1-15-flowered; bracts minute
• Flowers bisexual, pedicellate
• Sepals 5, green, ± deltoid, with margin laciniate, equal, pubescent
• Petals 5, greenish yellow, circular or depressed-ovate, margin entire or sparingly ciliolate, spreading
• Disc fleshy, entire
• Stamens 5, spreading, arising from and united at base with margin of disc; anthers introrse, dehiscing by longitudinal slits
• Ovary three-quarters immersed in and adnate to and ± flush with disc, 3- or 4-locular, with 2 erect, collateral ovules per locule; style very short or absent, stigma inconspicuously lobed
• Fruit a drupe, yellow-brown to bright red, ± spheroid; endocarp thin and crustaceous; mesocarp fleshy, the inner part often crustaceous or woody, resembling part of endocarp
• Seed usually single, seed coat light brown, postchalazal vascular bundles often present; endosperm present; embryo erect, foliar

Nomenclature:

• Mystroxylon Eckl. & Zeyh.
  • Ecklon & Zeyher: 125 (1834/1835)
  • Loesener: 176 (1942)
  • Robson: 29 (1965)
  • Robson: 376 (1966)
  • Robson et al.: 21 (1994)
  • Archer: 107 (1996)
  • Archer, Van Wyk & Condy: 76 (1997)
• Mystroxylon Eckl. & Zeyh. sect. Eumystroxylon Loes.
  • Loesener: 178 (1942)

Distribution & Notes:

• Global: Monotypic: Mystroxylon aethiopicum (Thunb.) Loes., a widespread and very polymorphic species in Africa and the Mascarene Islands
• Southern Africa: 4 subspecies are recognised, Namibia, Botswana, Northern Province, Gauteng, Mpumalanga, Swaziland, KwaZulu-Natal, Western and Eastern Cape