Description:

• Evergreen shrubs or small trees
• Leaves alternate, shortly petioled; blade usually elliptic, coriaceous, margins spinulose-serrate; stipules apparently extant (scar present)
• Flowers bisexual or male, in axillary spike-like racemes
• Sepals 4 or 5, free, unequal, imbricate, concave
• Petals similar to sepals but larger, with a petaloid scale opposite each petal with a gland on inner face at base
• Stamens many, in several rows, inner hypogynous, outer attached to base of scales
• Ovary superior, 1-locular, with a thick fleshy wall; ovules many on 4 or 5 parietal placentas; style almost 0; stigmas 4 or 5
• Fruit a globose berry
• Seeds few, subglobose: testa leathery; embryo straight; cotyledons thin, elliptic; endosperm fleshy, copious

Nomenclature:

• Rawsonia Harv. & Sond.
  • Harvey & Sonder: 67 (1860)
  • Sim: 12 (1909)
  • Engler: 559 (1921)
  • Gilg: 394 (1925)
  • Wild: 262 (1960)
  • Bamps: 4 (1968)
  • Killick: 54 (1976)

Distribution & Notes:

• Global: Species probably only 2, tropical and southern Africa
• Southern Africa: Species 1: Rawsonia lucida Harv. & Sond., Botswana, Northern Province, Mpumalanga, Swaziland, KwaZulu-Natal and Eastern Cape