Description:

• Trees, shrubs or undershrubs, dioecious
• Leaves alternate, subopposite or subverticillate, simple, coriaceous
• Flowers in axillary racemes, pseudoracemes, pseudocymes, panicles, or solitary
• Calyx 4- or 5-lobed, persistent
• Corolla urceolate to subglobose and shallowly 5-8-lobed on mouth or campanulate and deeply 4- or 5-lobed
• Stamens 10-30, free or filaments joined at base in pairs or groups; filaments shorter than anthers; anthers dehiscing by lateral, longitudinal slits; staminodes present or absent in female flowers
• Ovary on a fimbriate, somewhat fleshy disc, 2-6-locular, with a single, pendulous ovule in each locule, or locules incompletely septate and then with 2 ovules; styles 1 or 2(3)
• Fruit a berry, 1(2 or 3)-seeded
• Seeds usually globose or, if 2 or 3 together, then hemispherical or 3-angled, marked into 3 areas by a curved groove as in a tennis ball; endosperm usually flinty
• x = 15.
  

Nomenclature:

• Euclea Murray
  • Murray: 747 (1774)
  • Hiern: 460 (1906)
  • De Winter: 80 (1963)
  • White: 289 (1983)
  • Retief: 228 (1986)

Distribution & Notes:

• Global: Species ± 20, Africa
• Southern Africa: Species 16, Namibia, Botswana, Northern Province, North-West, Gauteng, Mpumalanga, Swaziland, Free State, KwaZulu-Natal, Lesotho, Northern, Western and Eastern Cape