Source:
SSA
Description:
Shrubs or small trees, glabrous. Leaves opposite, petiolate, ovate or elliptic, dentate or subentire. Flowers many, pedicellate, bibracteolate and subfascicled in clusters in leaf axils, sometimes solitary or on old wood without leaves. Calyx 3-5-cleft, very much shorter than corolla tube, cup-shaped or subrotate. Corolla 4- or 5-lobed, +/- bilabiate, sometimes regular; tube curved or straight, sometimes slightly gibbous at base in front, inflated above to funnel-shaped, oblique or not at mouth, pubescent within lower, cylindrical portion; upper lip 2-lobed, exterior in bud; lower lip shortly 3-lobed; lobes subequal, much shorter than tube. Stamens 4, didynamous or subequal, exserted or shortly included; filaments filiform, arising subcentrally or lower in corolla tube; anthers bithecate; thecae diverging, at length divaricate; staminodes 0. Nectary cushion-shaped. Ovary bilocular, ovoid, with many ovules; style long, filiform, usually exserted, persistent; stigma simple or 2-lobed. Fruit a globose, indehiscent berry. Seeds compressed, narrowly winged, buried in jelly-like flesh.
Distribution:
Species 10, Yemen, Madagascar, Africa; Ethiopia to Cape Peninsula, also in Angola; 3 in sthn Afr., widespread but not in Namibia or Northern Cape; in montane to riverine forest, scrub and bush.
Classification:
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