Description:
Shrubs or small trees, silky-pilose, with young branches subangular, older ones terete, nodes rather thickened, with conspicuous scars after leaf fall. Leaves decussate, oblong-lanceolate, entire. Flowers 6-merous, regular, axillary, solitary, rarely geminate, pedicellate; pedicels 2-bracteolate at base, bracteoles very soon caducous. Calyx turbinate-campanulate, coriaceous, with lobes widely 3-angular and appendages +/- short, horn-shaped. Petals 6, obovate, corrugated, shortly clawed. Stamens 12-18, 1- or 2-seriately arising a little below middle of calyx tube, subequal or alternately unequal; filaments filiform; anthers broadly elliptic. Ovary globose, shortly stipitate, 3-locular; style short or elongate; stigma 2-lobed; ovules many, erect. Capsule subglobose, +/- enclosed in calyx tube, becoming almost 1-locular, dehiscing by a transverse slit at middle (circumscissile). Seeds many, erect, imbricate, obcuneate, winged; wing thickened.
Distribution:
Monotypic or genus with 2 species, one littoral and widespread in Old World tropics, the other confined to the low mountains of SW Madagascar; sthn trop. Afr. 1: Pemphis acidula J.R.Forst. & G.Forst., Mozambique.
Source:
SSTA
Classification:
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