Description:

• Robust lianas, glabrous
• Leaves simple, ovate or ovate-lanceolate, entire, penninerved, with nerves prominent below, the two lateral basal ones often especially so
• Inflorescences variably dense pseudoracemes, often cauliflorous, few-flowered, axillary or from old stems, or in axillary, solitary, sometimes 1-flowered cymules
• Male flowers: sepals 6-12, outer bract-like, outermost smaller than inner 3, ± fleshy or coriaceous; petals 3-6; stamens 3-9, free or ± connate; anthers introrse, with oblique or longitudinal dehiscence
• Female flowers similar to male; staminodes 0; carpels (3-)8-12(-30), borne on an apparent gynophore
• Drupelets ovoid, stipitate, with remains of stigma near stipe; exocarp glabrescent, smooth or verrucose; endocarp bony, horseshoe-shaped, without prominent ridges or tubercles; condyle narrowly obovate
• Seed with endosperm ruminate, sparse or 0; embryo curved; cotyledons fleshy, appressed, often unequal
• x = 13 (12) (1 report)

Nomenclature:

• Tiliacora Colebr.
  • Colebrooke: 53 (1822)
  • Miers: 36 (1851)
  • Bentham: 36 (1862)
  • Oliver: 43 (1868)
  • Baillon: 34 (1872)
  • Prantl: 85 (1891)
  • Engler: 400 (1899)
  • Diels: 59 (1910)
  • Troupin: 7 (1956)
  • Troupin: 153 (1960)
  • Troupin: 47 (1962)
  • Troupin & Gonçalves: 6 (1973)
  • Forman: 89 (1975)
  • Kessler: 411 (1993)
  • Thulin: 26 (1993)

Distribution & Notes:

• Global: Species ± 20, in Old World tropical regions, mainly in Africa, 2 in SE Asia
• Southern Africa: Species 1: Tiliacora funifera (Miers) Oliv., Mpumalanga and N KwaZulu-Natal