Description:

• Deciduous shrubs; older stems sometimes with greyish bark
• Leaves shortly petiolate, usually obovate; stipules ovate
• Flowers 5(4 or 8)-merous, bisexual, precocious, usually 1(or 2) pairs borne on very reduced leafless spurs, sessile
• Calyx somewhat unequally 4- or 5-lobed; tube narrowly campanulate; lobes lanceolate or oblong, apiculate, glabrous
• Corolla white, tinged with pink; deeply 4- or 5-lobed; tube narrowly funnel-shaped above, cylindric below, pubescent outside, hairy at throat; lobes oblong or oval, contorted in bud
• Stamens 4 or 5, arising at mouth of corolla tube; anthers linear, sessile, dorsifixed
• Disc usually inconspicuous
• Ovary 2-locular, with 2-5 pendulous ovules in each locule; style slender, exserted, shortly pubescent, stigmatic club entirely bifid but usually cohering except at apex
• Fruit baccate, globose; calyx lobes eventually deciduous
• Seeds pendulous, somewhat compressed, with a thin testa
• x = 11 (1 report)

Nomenclature:

• Feretia Delile
  • Delile: 92 (1834)
  • Hooker: 95 (1873)
  • Hiern: 115 (1877)
  • Bridson & Verdcourt: 696 (1988)

Distribution & Notes:

• Global: Species 2, tropical Africa
• Southern Africa: Species 1: Feretia aeruginescens Stapf, Namibia