Shrubs or small trees, or sometimes scandent, rarely arborescent
Leaves entire or crenate
Flowers small, often unisexual, borne in axillary racemes or umbels or in terminal or lateral panicles
Calyx with sepals sometimes almost free or connate, imbricate, usually marked with resiniferous dots
Corolla with petals free, or shortly connate, elliptic, obovate or oblong, spreading or reflexed, sometimes glandular, inner surface and sometimes outer margins densely papillose
Stamens free, shorter or longer than corolla, variously attached to petals; filaments linear; anthers ovate, dehiscing by slits or very rarely by pores
Ovary superior, subglobose or ovoid, often pilose; style long or short; ovule single; stigma discoid, entire or very rarely lobed; young capsule sometimes thin-walled
Fruit a globose, 1-seeded drupe, up to ± 14 mm in diameter; pericarp fleshy; endocarp woody
Nomenclature:
Embelia Burm.f.
Burman: 62 (1768)
Mez: 295 (1902)
Harvey & Wright: 433 (1906)
Phillips: 563 (1951)
Dyer: 3 (1963)
Distribution & Notes:
Global: Species ± 130, through Asia, Australia, Mascarene Islands, as well as tropical Africa
Southern Africa: Species 2: Embelia ruminata (E.Mey. ex A.DC.) Mez, Namibia, KwaZulu-Natal and Eastern Cape
A specimen from the Caprivi (Namibia) has been referred to by Dyer: 5 (1963) as E. sp., by Kupicha: 198 (1983) as E. schimperi Vatke and by Halliday: 14 (1984) as E. xylocarpa P.Halliday
References:
BURMAN, N.J. 1768. Flora indica. Haack, Leiden
DYER, R. A. 1963. Myrsinaceae. Flora of southern Africa 26
HALLIDAY, P. 1984. Flora of tropical East Africa. Myrsinaceae
KUPICHA, F. K. 1983. Myrsinaceae. Flora zambesiaca: 7,1
MEZ, C. 1902. Myrsinaceae. Das Pflanzenreich 4. 236 (Heft 9)
PHILLIPS, E.P. 1951. The genera of South African flowering plants. Memoirs of the Botanical Survey of South Africa No. 25
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Welcome to Biodiversity Advisor 2.0!
Biodiversity Advisor, developed by the South African National Biodiversity Institute (SANBI) and its Data Partners, is a system that will provide integrated biodiversity information to a wide range of users who will have access to geospatial data, plant and animal species distribution data, ecosystem-level data, literature, images and metadata.
The integrated information comes from our much-loved Botanical Database of Southern Africa (BODATSA) also known as Plants of Southern Africa (POSA), Zoological Database of Southern Africa (ZODATSA), Biodiversity Geographic Information System (BGIS), SANBI's institutional repository (Opus) and others.
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In future, Team SANBI will be able to log in using their day-to-day login details, BGIS users will be able to use their existing accounts and details, and general users will be able to log in using their LinkedIn profile, but for now you will need to create an account.
