Description:

• Shrubs or small trees, with soft wood; ends of branchlets comparatively thick
• Leaves alternate, crowded apically, petiolate, simple, subrotund, irregularly crenate, lobed; petiole sheathing; venation ± palmate at base; stipules 0
• Flowers bisexual, regular, showy, in terminal, pedunculate racemes; bracts small, lanceolate
• Calyx 5-partite, persistent; segments oblong, imbricate
• Petals 5, free, longer than sepals, oblong, glandular-ciliate, imbricate, red, rarely white
• Disc fleshy, basin-shaped, 10-lobed, with lobes alternating with filaments and with a large gland at apex, or disc of 8 large, oblong structures lobed at apex and without glands
• Stamens 10, in 2 rows, inserted between disc and ovary, longer than petals; filaments subterete; anthers 2-thecate, with longitudinal dehiscence
• Ovary superior, 5-locular, oblong, deeply 5-grooved; ovules many, on parietal placentas; style simple
• Fruit a 5-grooved, septicidal capsule
• Seeds many, minute, elongated; endosperm copious
• x = 16

Classification Notes:

• Formerly included in Melianthaceae, but leaves simple and ovules many

Nomenclature:

• Greyiaceae
  • Hutchinson: 205 (1973)
  • Dahlgren & Van Wyk: 29 (1988)

Distribution & Notes:

• Southern Africa: Genus 1, species 3

References:

• DAHLGREN, R. & VAN WYK, A.E. 1988. Structures and relationships of families endemic to or centered in southern Africa. Monographs in Systematic Botany from the Missouri Botanical Garden 25
• HUTCHINSON, J. 1973. The families of flowering plants, edn 3, Vol. 1. Clarendon Press, Oxford

Resources:

• Greyiaceae genus: Greyia