Description:

• Shrubs or small trees; monoecious or sometimes dioecious
• Leaves alternate, petiolate, entire; stipulate
• Inflorescence of axillary glomerules, rarely spicate, with female flowers fewer or solitary, sometimes pedicellate; bracts scale-like
• Male flowers: sepals 5, usually small and scale-like, valvate; petals 5, obovate, shorter than sepals; disc entire or sinuately lobed; stamens 5; filaments connate; ovary rudimentary at apex of staminal column
• Female flowers: sepals often narrower than those of male; disc double, the outer annular, the inner usually cup-like and surrounding base of ovary, or of separate scales; ovary 2(3)-locular, with 2 ovules in each locule; styles distinct or shortly connate, bilobed or subentire
• Fruit a capsule separating into 2 cocci, or drupaceous or berry-like; endocarp crustaceous, forming 2 pyrenes
• Seeds often solitary by abortion in each pyrene; albumen copious, fleshy; embryo curved; cotyledons broad, foliaceous
• x = 13

Nomenclature:

• Bridelia Willd.
  • Willdenow: 978 (1806) as Briedelia
  • Hutchinson: 378 (1915)
  • Radcliffe-Smith: 120 (1987)
  • Webster: 39 (1994) adopting Willdenow's original spelling
  • Radcliffe-Smith: 12 (1996); proposal for spelling of name to be conserved

Distribution & Notes:

• Global: Species ± 60, Africa to Asia and Australia
• Southern Africa: Species 4, Namibia, Botswana, Northern Province, Mpumalanga to KwaZulu-Natal and Eastern Cape