Description:

• Climbing, straggling or erect shrubs or small trees, usually with stellate and sometimes also simple hairs
• Leaves ± leathery, mostly elliptic-oblong
• Inflorescences short terminal cymes, opposite leaves, only rarely axillary or flowers solitary
• Flowers usually bisexual, dull to yellowish green
• Sepals 3, valvate, often connate at base, or calyx cupular in bud and later splitting into often irregular lobes
• Petals 6, imbricate, in 2 whorls, subequal, sometimes connate at base; inner somewhat smaller than outer and without glands at base
• Stamens many, inserted on torus surrounding carpels; filaments very short or absent, outer sometimes sterile and leaf-like; anther thecae lateral or extrorse; connective expanded into a truncate appendage
• Carpels many, free, linear-oblong in outline, sometimes angular and furrowed; ovules few-many in 1 or 2 rows; style absent or short and thick; stigma 5, horseshoe-shaped or funnel-shaped with a slit down inner side, with involute margins
• Monocarps indehiscent, ± oblique, oblong to ovoid to subglobose, stipitate or subsessile, 1-many-seeded, dry or sometimes fleshy when ripe
• Seeds horizontal or oblique, ovate, brown and shiny; aril small or 0
• x = 8 (aneuploids)

Nomenclature:

• Uvaria L.
  • Linnaeus: 536 (1753)
  • Linnaeus: 240 (1754)
  • Endlicher: 832 (1839)
  • Sonder: 8 (1860)
  • Bentham: 464 (1862)
  • Oliver: 19 (1868)
  • Hooker & Thomson: 47 (1872)
  • Prantl: 30 (1891)
  • Engler & Diels: 7 (1901)
  • Robson: 106 (1960)
  • Le Thomas: 37 (1969)
  • Verdcourt: 2 (1971b)
  • Verdcourt: 10 (1971a)
  • Van Setten & Maas: 687 (1990)
  • Kessler: 111 (1993)

Distribution & Notes:

• Global: Species ± 110, mostly tropical Asia, Australia and Africa
• Southern Africa: Species 3, Northern Province, Swaziland, KwaZulu-Natal and Eastern Cape