Nylandtia

Spiny, branched shrubs up to 4 m high; young twigs and branchlets spine-tipped. Bark greyish olive-green becoming rusty brown to grey, smooth to finely fissured to rough; young branchlets olive-green, grooved, smooth when fresh, becoming rugulose. Leaves fasciculate or scattered, small, glabrous, oblong, linear or elliptical, spine-tipped. Flowers solitary, but often in pseudoracemes, axillary, purple, pink or white, pedicel present, hirsute; bracts 4, imbricate, cordate, ciliate. Sepals: 3 outer ones 1-2 mm long, ovate, subobtuse, ciliate, green with purplish pink tips; 2 inner (lateral) ones petaloid, much larger than outer ones, elliptic, wing-like, persistent, pink, purple or white. Petals 3; anterior one keel-like, enclosing stamens, with a lobed multifid crest (appendages) below apex; lateral ones oblong, as long as anterior one. Stamens 7; filament tube pilose above; anthers 2-thecous, linear, dehiscing by a longitudinal slit. Ovary narrowly obovate; style stout, branching at apex into one vertical and one horizontal lobe, stigma on horizontal lobe. Fruit a rounded drupe, up to 8 mm in diameter, fleshy, red, 1- or 2-seeded. Seeds sparsely pubescent, without aril; cotyledons small, oblong; endosperm scanty.