Description:

• Shrubs or trees with fibrous, stringy bark
• Leaves ternate, sometimes opposite, rarely some leaves alternate, petiolate, glabrous, scaly or variously pubescent, sometimes glutinous; hairs simple, branched or gland-tipped, short or long, dense or sparse; margin entire or variously toothed or lobed, sometimes somewhat undulate
• Cymes in terminal panicles or corymbosely congested, sometimes contracted into pseudoheads or umbels
• Calyx tubular-campanulate; lobes erect; tube usually appressed-hairy within
• Corolla with tube usually included in calyx, circumscissile near base and often bearded in throat; lobes usually reflexed over the erect calyx lobes
• Stamens arising in or just below throat of corolla tube; anthers exserted, thecae confluent
• Ovary 2-locular, narrowed into style; stigma terminal, usually exserted; ovules many in each locule
• Capsule small, slightly longer than to twice as long as persistent calyx, septicidally 2-valved, valves splitting at apex; placenta free
• Seeds many

Nomenclature:

• Nuxia Comm. ex Lam.
  • Lamarck: 295 t. 71 (1791)
  • Verdoorn: 150 (1963)
  • Leeuwenberg: 349 (1983)
• Lachnopylis Hochst.
  • Hochstetter: 77 (1843)
  • Phillips: 575 (1951)

Distribution & Notes:

• Global: Species ± 40, Africa, Madagascar and Mascarene Islands
• Southern Africa: Species 5, widespread