Description:

• Deciduous or evergreen shrubs or small trees, erect or decumbent, unarmed, pubescent
• Leaves alternate, entire, simple, coriaceous, often downy; stipules subulate, caducous
• Inflorescences lateral and terminal cymes, a small corymb or occasionally flowers solitary
• Flowers bisexual, small, shorter than 10 mm
• Calyx: tube turbinate or campanulate; lobes 5, superior, short, persistent in fruit
• Petals 5, suborbicular, erect or spreading, white, pink or red
• Stamens 10-20, inserted at mouth of calyx tube
• Ovary semi-inferior; carpels 2-5, adnate wholly, or by their backs only, to calyx tube; ovules 2, erect in each carpel; styles 2-5, free; stigma truncate
• Fruit small, globose, somewhat succulent, red or black berries, crowned with persistent calyx tube, with mealy flesh, and with 2-5, 1-seeded, hard-walled pyrenes
• x = 17 (polyploidy)

Nomenclature:

• *Cotoneaster Medik.
  • Medikus: 85 (1793)
  • Lindley: 101 (1820)
  • Kunth: 214 (1823)
  • Candolle: 632 (1825)
  • Endlicher: 1238 (1840)
  • Hooker: 627 (1865)
  • Focke: 21 (1894)
  • Browicz: 72 (1968)
  • Bailey & Bailey: 322 (1977)
  • Meikle: 637 (1977)
  • Klotz: 7 (1982)
  • Hedberg: 41 (1989)
  • Fryer & Hylmö: 426 (1995)

Distribution & Notes:

• Global: Species ± 70, mainly in the north temperate regions of Europe and Asia, particularly abundant in W China and the Himalaya region; several species have been widely grown as ornamentals for their decorative berries
• Southern Africa: Species 2, naturalised: *Cotoneaster franchetii Boiss. and *C. pannosus Franch., Gauteng, Free State, KwaZulu-Natal and Eastern Cape