Description:

• Shrubs
• Leaves petiolate, usually lanceolate; usually with distinct, pubescent domatia; stipules broadly ovate, conspicuous
• Flowers in few- to many-flowered, terminal, sessile or subsessile cymes
• Calyx hairy; tube cylindric or campanulate, equalling ovary; lobes linear-lanceolate, contorted, with short, fleshy setae at base
• Corolla 5-lobed, white, hairy; lobes lanceolate, shorter than tube, contorted; tube long, cylindric, ± hairy in throat
• Stamens 5, arising deep in corolla throat, included, or apex of anthers exserted; anthers sessile, linear, sometimes acuminate
• Ovary 2-locular, with many ovules in each locule on placentas attached to septum; style linear, usually with pollen-collecting hairs at level of anthers; stigma 2-lobed, lobes linear, usually included
• Fruit indehiscent, ovoid, scarcely or slightly fleshy, often longitudinally ribbed, many-seeded
• Seeds angular, smooth and glossy, with a hilar pit
• x = 9, 11 (1 report each)

Nomenclature:

• Leptactina Hook.f.
  • Hooker: 73, t. 1092 (1871)
  • Hiern: 87 (1877)
  • Hallé: 70 (1970)
  • Bridson & Verdcourt: 688 (1988)

Distribution & Notes:

• Global: Species 25, tropical Africa
• Southern Africa: Species 1: Leptactina delagoensis K.Schum. subsp. delagoensis, Northern Province and KwaZulu-Natal