Description:

• Slender trees, unarmed, glabrous or with conspicuous hairs in axils of stipules; powdery yellow pigments in bark
• Leaves opposite on flowering shoots, alternate on vegetative ones, lanceolate, coriaceous, margin repand-serrate, petiolate; stipules triangular-acicular, free or ± united interpetiolarly, rapidly caducous
• Inflorescence a many-flowered, dense, pedunculate, axillary dichasium; bracts persistent
• Flowers bisexual, pedicellate; pedicels articulated at base
• Sepals 5, small, ovate, imbricate, connate at base, deeply laciniate
• Petals 5, much longer than sepals, oblong to elliptic, imbricate in bud, spreading, white or greenish
• Disc saucer-shaped, with 5-crenate margin
• Stamens 5, erect or soon becoming recurved, shorter than petals; filaments subterete; anthers basifixed
• Ovary 3-locular, with 2 erect collateral ovules per locule; styles 3, free; stigmas 3
• Fruit capsular, oblong, ± trigonous, dehiscing loculicidally into 3 valves; valves usually with prominent septal ridges on inner surface
• Seeds 1-4, reddish, oblong, rugose-papillose, with a wing below point of attachment; endosperm present

Nomenclature:

• Catha Forssk. ex Scop.
  • Scopoli: 228 (1777)
  • Oliver: 364 (1868)
  • Davison: 339 (1927)
  • Robson: 379 (1966)
  • Friis: 661 (1984)
  • Robson et al.: 25 (1994)

Distribution & Notes:

• Global: Monotypic: Catha edulis (Vahl) Endl. or Kat, widespread in eastern tropical Africa, Madagascar and the Arabian Peninsula
• Southern Africa: Northern Province, Mpumalanga, KwaZulu-Natal, Western and Eastern Cape