Description:

• Perennial herbs, usually with several stems from a woody rootstock, shrublets or shrubs
• Leaves 3-5-nate, rarely opposite, shortly petiolate, sometimes pale on undersurface; stipules small, connate at base, often villous within, persistent, 3-5-tailed
• Flowers usually few in pedunculate cymes, rarely solitary; buds obtuse or shortly apiculate
• Calyx 5-9-lobed, or -toothed; tube shallowly cup-shaped; limb truncate
• Corolla 5(6)-lobed, white or greenish white; lobes ovate, usually acuminate, as long as or longer than tube, often with mucro behind apex, papillate on inner surface; tube cylindric or campanulate, glabrous or hairy outside, with ring of deflexed hairs inside, pubescent to densely hairy above it, densely hairy or less often glabrous at throat
• Stamens 5(6), arising in corolla mouth, shortly exserted; filaments linear, shorter than anthers; anthers oblong, sometimes with fleshy apiculus, sometimes sagittate
• Disc annular
• Ovary 3- or 4(-9)-locular, with a solitary pendulous ovule in each locule; style terete, shortly exserted; stigma subglobose or shortly cylindric, often truncate at base, shallowly 3-5-lobed, furrowed, sometimes ribbed
• Fruit usually a globose drupe, sometimes oblique, usually crowned with remains of calyx limb, with 1-3(-9) pyrenes

Nomenclature:

• Fadogia Schweinf.
  • Schweinfurth: 47 (1868)
  • Robyns: 41 (1928)
  • Phillips: 733 (1951)
  • Verdcourt & Bridson: 786 (1991)
  • Bridson: 265 (1998)

Distribution & Notes:

• Global: Species ± 45, tropical Africa
• Southern Africa: Species 3, Namibia, Northern Province, Gauteng, Mpumalanga and Swaziland