Description:

• Trees or shrubs, usually completely glabrous, young branches narrowly 4-winged, 4-gonous or terete
• Leaves entire, longitudinally 1-3(-5)-nerved, shortly petiolate
• Flowers 4-merous, small or minute, in fascicles or in cymes forming panicle-like or corymbose inflorescences; bracts minute
• Receptacle broadly campanulate, hemispherical or cupular, limb ± dilated, truncate, 4-toothed or -lobed
• Petals broadly ovate, obovate, circular-subdeltate, obtuse or apiculate, whitish or bluish
• Stamens 8, equal, sometimes 4 with abortive anthers; filaments filiform; anthers axe-shaped, with 2 anterior thecae dehiscing by 2 longitudinal slits and usually with a gland on the concave back
• Ovary 1-locular, wholly adherent to receptacle, sunken or convex at apex; style filiform; ovules 2-12(-20), on a central placenta
• Fruit an ovoid, globose or ellipsoid, 1(2)-seeded berry, crowned by persistent calyx
• Seeds large; cotyledons crumpled or not so
• x = 7 (12?) (polyploidy)

Nomenclature:

• Memecylon L.
  • Linnaeus: 349 (1753)
  • Fernandes & Fernandes: 221 (1978)
  • Van Wyk: 173 (1983)
  • Jacques-Félix: 266 (1995)
• Eugenia Sond.
  • Sonder: 523 (1862) in part

Distribution & Notes:

• Global: Species 150, Old World: Africa to Asia and Australia, ± 50 in Africa
• Southern Africa: Species 3, KwaZulu-Natal to Eastern Cape border area