Description:

• Shrubs or small trees, unarmed or lateral branches becoming stoutly spinescent; young parts often glutinous; branches sometimes in whorls of 3
• Leaves opposite or verticillate, petiolate, thin to distinctly coriaceous; domatia 0 or present; stipules sheathing, ovate
• Flowers subsessile or shortly pedicellate; solitary or rarely in corymbose heads; buds with wax-secreting glands
• Calyx 5-8-lobed; tube cylindric to campanulate, sometimes split partly or completely to base on one side
• Corolla 5-7-lobed, white, glabrous or hairy; lobes broadly ovate, obovate or elliptic, obtuse or rounded, contorted; tube cylindric, campanulate or funnel-shaped, hairy within
• Stamens 5-8, arising in throat of corolla tube or lower, included or subexserted; anthers usually with apical appendage
• Disc tumid, annular or crenate
• Ovary 2-locular, with many parietal ovules, or 1-locular below and 6-locular above middle; style terete or linear, included or subexserted; stigma linear-lanceolate or clavate, sometimes with tumid ridges in hair-pin shape, sometimes 2-lobed
• Fruit ovoid or globose, often comparatively large and hard, with a thick fibrous to woody wall, usually many-seeded
• Seeds compressed, elliptic, smooth or with slightly reticulate testa, stuck together into a solid mass in pulp
• x = 11

Nomenclature:

• Gardenia J.Ellis
  • Ellis: 935 (1761) name conserved
  • Sonder: 4 (1865)
  • Phillips: 726 (1951)
  • Hallé: 218 (1970)
  • Bridson & Verdcourt: 500 (1988)

Distribution & Notes:

• Global: Species ± 60, in tropical and warm parts of the Old World
• Southern Africa: Species 6, absent from Northern and Western Cape