Description:

• Trees or shrubs
• Leaves: leaflets 2-many-jugate, with entire or toothed margin
• Flowers bisexual or sometimes unisexual, in sessile or pedunculate, terminal or lateral, dense or lax, racemes
• Calyx divided nearly or quite to base, usually hairy
• Petals 5, unequal, clawed, sometimes with appendages, usually tomentose outside
• Disc unilateral or semi-annular
• Stamens 4(5) arising inside disc; filaments connate, hairy
• Ovary 4- or 5-locular, with a solitary, erect ovule in each locule, villous; style simple, often hairy towards base; stigma globose or subglobose
• Fruit a globose or elliptic, leathery or woody capsule, often covered with protuberances, 4- or 5-valved
• Seeds subglobose, sometimes keeled or angled, black or reddish, with a yellow, waxy aril
• x = 19

Nomenclature:

• Bersama Fres.
  • Fresenius: 280 t. 17 (1837)
  • Phillips: 33 (1921)
  • White: 544 (1966)
• Natalia Hochst.
  • Hochstetter: 663 (1841)
  • Sonder: 369 (1860)

Distribution & Notes:

• Global: Species ± 8, Africa
• Southern Africa: Species ± 4, Northern Province, Mpumalanga, Swaziland, KwaZulu-Natal and Eastern Cape