Description:

• Shrubs or small trees
• Leaves petiolate, oblong, elliptic or lanceolate-elliptic, usually paler on undersurface; stipules shortly connate at base, shortly subulate, villous within, soon falling
• Flowers in few- to many-flowered, dichotomously branched, axillary cymes, or terminating short, lateral shoots; peduncles short; pedicels mostly elongate
• Calyx deeply 5-lobed; lobes usually almost as long as or longer than tube, elongate-spathulate or narrowly oblong-spathulate, obtuse; tube short, subglobose
• Corolla 5-lobed, yellow, glabrous or hairy; lobes elongate, acuminate or acute, reflexed; tube cylindric to campanulate, with ring of deflexed hairs near base within, glabrous or sparsely hairy at throat
• Stamens 5, arising in corolla mouth, exserted; filaments shorter than anthers; anthers apiculate
• Disc annular, tumid
• Ovary 5-locular, with a single pendulous ovule in each locule; style filiform, usually exserted; stigma broadly cylindric, sulcate, shortly 5-lobed
• Fruit a drupe varying in shape according to number (1-5) of pyrenes developed; pyrenes asymmetrically ellipsoid, pyriform or subglobose with woody walls
• x = 11 (high polyploidy)

Nomenclature:

• Lagynias E.Mey. ex Robyns
  • Meyer: 159 (1843)
  • Robyns: 312 (1928)
  • Sonder: 13 (1865) under Vangueria
  • Phillips: 731 (1951)
  • Verdcourt & Bridson: 761 (1991)
  • Bridson: 238 (1998)
• Ancylanthos Desf. in part, as to A. monteiroi Oliv.
  • Pooley: 478 (1993)

Distribution & Notes:

• Global: Species 4, tropical Africa
• Southern Africa: Species 3, Northern Province and KwaZulu-Natal