Description:

• Inflorescences pedunculate or sessile, axillary, dichasial
• Flowers usually bisexual, pedicellate
• Sepals 4 or 5, equal, ovate or deltoid to suborbicular, margin ciliolate or laciniate
• Petals 4 or 5, cream to white, elliptic to oblong, spreading, margin entire
• Disc fleshy, lobed or entire
• Stamens 4 or 5, ± spreading or erect, arising from and united at base with margin of sinuses in disc
• Ovary ± immersed and adnate to disc, 2- or 3-locular, with 2 erect collateral ovules per locule; style short or absent; stigma usually conspicuously 2- or 3-lobed
• Fruit baccate, spheroid, ± 10 mm in diam., brown to dark brown or purplish; mesocarp fleshy or leathery
• Seeds 1 or 2(-6), spheroid to ellipsoid, seed-coat brown; fleshy endosperm present; embryo erect with cotyledons fleshy, widely elliptic to circular

Nomenclature:

• Cassine L.
  • Linnaeus: 129 (1754)
  • Candolle: 11 (1825) in part
  • Sonder: 465 (1860)
  • Davison: 326 (1927)
  • Loesener: 176 (1942)
  • Codd: 123 (1966)
  • Archer & Van Wyk: 146 (1997)
• Hartogia Thunb. ex L.f.
  • Linnaeus: 16 (1782)
  • Candolle: 12 (1825)
  • Sonder: 464 (1860)
  • Hooker: 363 (1862)
  • Davison: 345 (1927)
  • Loesener: 179 (1942).
• Hartogiella Codd
  • Codd: 219 (1983)

Distribution & Notes:

• Southern Africa: Species 3, endemic, especially Western Cape; forest and woodland in Northern Province, Mpumalanga, Swaziland, KwaZulu-Natal, Western and Eastern Cape.