Description:
Small trees; dioecious or more rarely monoecious; branchlets sparsely stellately hairy, soon glabrous. Leaves simple, oblong or ovate, with margins entire or repand, petiolate; stipulate. Inflorescence of axillary pedunculate cymes. Flowers unisexual; pedicels stellate-pubescent; bracts stellate-pilose, caducous. Calyx campanulate, 2- or 3-lobed. Petals 5, narrowed to base, white, glandless. Androgynophore obsolete. Stamens many, united at base. Ovary 2-locular, 2-lobed, sessile, with 1(2) pendulous ovules per locule; style obsolete or very short; stigma large and spreading, 2-lobed. Fruit a 2-valved capsule, usually with 1 seed; each valve prolonged by 2 unequal, horizontally spreading, foliaceous wings in a vertical plane. Seed large, villous or hairy, at least at apex; testa coriaceous; endosperm fleshy.
Distribution:
Species ?8, ?6 in tropical America, 2 in trop. Africa; sthn trop. Afr. 1: Berrya africana (Mast.) Kosterm., Mozambique. Verdcourt (2001: 5) notes:
Source:
SSTA
Synonym(s):
Carpodiptera Griseb. (see note below); Wild: 33 (1963); Wild & Goncalves: 2 (1969); Verdcourt: 5 (2001); Coates Palgrave: 682 (2002).
Classification:
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