Description:

• Trees or shrubs; young branches minutely lepidote, sometimes with conspicuous lenticels, or velvety tomentose but soon glabrescent
• Leaves imparipinnate, opposite, petiolate; leaflets ovate or elliptic, sometimes acuminate; pseudostipules well developed, subcircular to reniform, or ovate to subulate-acuminate
• Flowers in terminal or lateral axillary panicles or racemes, pedicellate
• Calyx spathaceous, split down posterior side, boat-shaped, cuspidate or hooked at apex, ± coriaceous
• Corolla ± bilabiate, yellow-greenish and maroon, or yellow with reddish striae; tube cylindrical or funnel-shaped at base, campanulate above; lobes 5, shorter than tube, obovate, glandular on inner face
• Stamens 4, didynamous, included; filaments terete, sometimes glandular and thickened at base; anthers with thecae connate above, divergent below; staminode sometimes 1
• Nectary annular or cupular, crenate
• Ovary oblong, attenuate, bilocular; ovules many, in 4-6 rows per locule; style terete, included; stigma of two obovate lobes
• Fruit a long, linear, ± straight to falciform capsule, glabrous or minutely tomentose; valves 2, flattened and dehiscing parallel to a false septum borne in middle of a very small true septum
• Seeds subrectangular with 2 papery, subrectangular wings; testa somewhat coriaceous
• x = 10 (polyploidy)

Nomenclature:

• Markhamia Seem. ex Baill.
  • Baillon: 47 (1888) ('1891')
  • Merxmüller & Schreiber: 3 (1967)
  • Palgrave: 830 (1977)
  • Ross: t. 1757 (1977)
  • Diniz: 72 (1988)

Distribution & Notes:

• Global: Species 10, mainly tropical Africa, also Asia
• Southern Africa: Species 2, Namibia, Botswana and in the far north of South Africa (Northern Province); also possibly further south in Kruger National Park (Mpumalanga)