Description:

• Trees, often with very thick swollen trunks, sometimes shrubs with tuberous rootstocks (often smelling and tasting of horseradish); wood often brittle; bark pale grey to whitish, smooth, sometimes resinous or gummy
• Leaves alternate, usually bi-imparipinnate, petiolate, deciduous or rachis sometimes persistent; pinnae and pinnules mainly opposite or sometimes subopposite, entire; stipules usually minute, caducous, stipitate glands at base of petioles and pinnae
• Inflorescences paniculate, many-flowered, axillary
• Flowers bisexual, regular to somewhat irregular, usually showy, perigynous with sepals, petals and stamens fused at base into a cup-like hypanthium
• Sepals 5, free above hypanthium, petaloid, equal or unequal in size, imbricate in bud, fifth posticous
• Petals 5, free, alternating with sepals, equal or unequal in size, imbricate, white
• Stamens 5, inserted on margin of disc or epipetalous, declinate, alternating with 3-5 staminodes; filaments free or partly united; anthers 1-thecous, dorsifixed, dehiscing lengthwise by a slit, sometimes cohering
• Ovary superior, consisting of 3 fused carpels, 1-locular, stipitate, cylindrical; ovules many in 2 series on 3 parietal placentas, pendulous, anatropous, bitegmic; style terete, slender, hollow, truncate at apex and without stigmatic lobes
• Fruit an elongated, beaked, 1-locular, many-seeded, pod-like capsule opening by 3 valves, 3-6-angled, sometimes torulose
• Seeds large, with 3 membranous wings; endosperm 0; embryo straight and oily
• x = 7 (polyploidy)

Nomenclature:

• Moringa Adans.
  • Adanson: 318 (1763)
  • Jussieu: 348 (1789)
  • Hooker: 430 (1862)
  • Marloth: 244 (1913)
  • Pax: 697 (1936)
  • Friedrich-Holzhammer: 1 (1966)
  • Leistner: 184 (1970)
  • Verdcourt: 1 (1985)
  • Verdcourt: 1 (1986)
• Hyperanthera Forssk.
  • Forsskål: 67 (1775)

Distribution & Notes:

• Global: Species ± 14; 9 ± endemic to NE Africa with 1 extending to Israel and Arabia, 1 endemic to Namibia and SW Angola, 2 to Madagascar and 2 to India
• Southern Africa: Species 1: Moringa ovalifolia Dinter & Berger, endemic, Namibia
• Notes:
  • *Moringa oleifera Lam. is extensively cultivated mainly as individual trees throughout the tropics in ± dry areas
  • The seeds are the source of ben oil, leaves and fruits are eaten as vegetables and the root as a horseradish substitute