Description:

• Trees or shrubs, usually with yellow juice, sometimes with leafy branches modified into thorns
• Leaves opposite or in whorls of 3, sometimes large, usually entire, coriaceous, venation usually prominent, often with translucent glandular canals and brownish resin canals
• Flowers terminal or axillary, solitary or in few- to many-flowered cymes, usually unisexual and plants then either dioecious or polygamous, or flowers rarely bisexual
• Sepals 4(5), decussate
• Petals 4(5), longer than sepals
• Male flowers: stamens many, free or all connate in (3)4 or 5(-9) fascicles (bundles) with each fascicle forming a solid staminal column bearing free or partially fused filaments above, sometimes with a whorl of sterile stamen fascicles (fasciclodes) alternating with stamen fascicles or forming a cushion from which stamens arise; anthers opening by a circular rim or longitudinal slits
• Female or bisexual flowers: usually with 4(5) stamen fascicles or staminode fascicles, similar to those of male flowers but smaller and with fewer members, sometimes with fasciclodes free or fused together in a ring at base of ovary
• Ovary 2-many-locular with 1 ovule per locule; styles absent; stigma sessile, peltate, lobed, smooth or tuberculate
• Fruit baccate
• Seeds 1-4, large, arillate; embryo with minute cotyledons
• x = 8 or 12 (high polyploidy)

Nomenclature:

• Garcinia L.
  • Linnaeus: 443 (1753)
  • Robson: 396 (1961)
  • Killick & Robson: 20 (1976)

Distribution & Notes:

• Global: Species ± 400, fairly cosmopolitan in tropical countries with a concentration in Asia
• Southern Africa: Species 2, Northern Province, Mpumalanga, Swaziland, KwaZulu-Natal and Eastern Cape; in forests