Source:
SSA
Description:
Trees or shrubs, sometimes with abbreviated branchlets; dioecious or rarely monoecious. Leaves alternate, shortly petiolate, entire; stipulate. Flowers in axillary fascicles; male often many, female few or solitary. Petals 0. Male flowers: sepals (4)5(-7), unequal, membranous, imbricate, shortly ciliate; stamens (4)5(-7); filaments free; pistillodes present; disc of 5 glands, hairy; ovary rudimentary, 2- or 3-partite. Female flowers: sepals as in male; disc flat, annular, entire or nearly so; ovary (2)3(4)-locular, with 2 ovules in each locule; styles connate at base, bifid or bilobate, spreading. Fruit slightly fleshy, usually loculicidally dehiscent, small, globose; endocarp crustaceous. Seeds obtusely 3-angled, rounded on back, smooth, ecarunculate, testa thick, crustaceous; albumen scanty; embryo incurved; cotyledons ovate, elliptic or obovate, flat. x = 8, 13 (polyploidy).
Distribution:
Species 14, tropics and E Asia; 2 in sthn Afr., Namibia, Botswana, Northern Province, Mpumalanga, KwaZulu-Natal and Eastern Cape.
Classification:
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