Source:
SSA
Description:
Small trees or shrubs, with stinging hairs on younger parts; stems and branches thick and with soft wood; plants dioecious. Leaves alternate, simple, often palmately or pinnately lobed, large, cordate at base, petiolate, with dot-like cystoliths; stipules lateral, free, almost foliaceous, persistent for some time. Inflorescences mostly in axils of fallen leaves, appearing before new leaves; male inflorescences smaller than female ones. Flowers pedicellate, clustered in branched, bracteate panicles. Male flowers regular; tepals 5, concave, valvate; stamens 5; ovary rudimentary. Female flowers irregular; tepals 4, with inner pair of segments larger than outer pair, accrescent; staminodes 0; ovary at first erect, soon oblique; stigma oblong, soon oblique, papillate. Achene compressed, ovoid to orbicular, partially enveloped in thinly membranous, persistent tepals.
Distribution:
Species +/- 8, east tropical and sthn Afr., Madagascar, the Mascarenes and Aldabra Islands; most species occur in dry habitats; 2 in sthn Afr., Namibia, Botswana, Northern Province, E North-West, Gauteng, Mpumalanga, Swaziland, KwaZulu-Natal and Eastern Cape.
Classification:
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