Description:

• Trees or large shrubs
• Leaves usually crowded at tips of branches; stipules caducous or 0
• Flowers axillary, usually in axils of lower leaves or scars
• Sepals 6(8), in 2 whorls, often broad
• Corolla 6(8)-lobed, each lobe with 2 dorsal appendages
• Stamens 6(8) arising from throat of corolla tube; filaments usually longer than the short anthers; staminodes 6(8) or sometimes fewer, usually small, but not absent, often dentate, fimbriate or lobed, glabrous, not incurved
• Ovary 6-16-locular; ovules ventrally or basiventrally attached
• Fruit 1-several-seeded
• Seeds laterally compressed; testa hard and brittle; scar conspicuous, rarely small
• x = 12

Nomenclature:

• Manilkara Adans.
  • Adanson: 166 (1763) name conserved
  • Meeuse: 48 (1963)
  • Roessler: 1 (1967)
  • Pennington: 128 (1991)
• Mimusops in sense of Harvey & Wright
  • Harvey & Wright: 439 (1906) in part
• Muriea M.M.Hartog
  • Hartog: 145 (1878)
  • Meeuse: 52 (1963) in part

Distribution & Notes:

• Global: Species ± 70, pantropical, 30 species in America, ± 20 in Africa and Madagascar and ± 15 in Asia and the Pacific
• Southern Africa: Species 4, Namibia, Botswana, Northern Provice, Mpumalanga, Swaziland and KwaZulu-Natal