Description:

• Shrubs; twigs lenticelled; buds covered with protective, persistent scales; dioecious
• Leaves alternate; stipulate; stipules chartaceous or membranous, often accrescent and modified into weak thorns
• Flowers usually racemose, small, with male flowers usually several within a bract, female solitary; pedicels capillary, articulate
• Petals 0
• Male flowers: calyx closed in bud, splitting into 3 or 4 valvate lobes; stamens (2-)10-40(-60), usually intermixed with small glands and sometimes surrounded by a ring of similar, free or connate glands; filaments free; anthers erect, 2-locular; locules free from base, opening by longitudinal, extrorse slits; ovary absent
• Female flowers: calyx 2(-4)-partite; disc usually of 2(3) free scales or lobes; ovary 2- or 3-locular; ovules solitary in each locule; styles usually connate below; stigmas usually plumosely laciniate
• Fruit 2(3)-coccous; cocci subglobose, opening loculicidally; valves coriaceous; subpersistent
• Seeds subglobose, covered by a thin, fleshy, viscid, usually scarlet aril; testa crustaceous, foveolate-reticulate or smooth; albumen fleshy; embryo axile, radicle conical, cotyledons broad, flat
• x = 10, 11 (1 report each, polyploidy)

Nomenclature:

• Erythrococca Benth.
  • Bentham: 506 (1849)
  • Prain: 459 (1920)
  • Radcliffe-Smith: 265 (1987)
  • Webster: 87 (1994)
  • Radcliffe-Smith: 165 (1996)

Distribution & Notes:

• Global: Species ± 50, mainly Africa
• Southern Africa: Species 4, Namibia, Botswana, Northern Province, Mpumalanga and KwaZulu-Natal