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Shrubs or small trees, often with short shoots, often armed with spines or spinescent short shoots. Raphides absent. Leaves opposite or often clustered and apparently fasciculate on short shoots, subsessile to petiolate, usually with domatia; stipules deciduous or caducous, interpetiolar, triangular. Inflorescences terminal on short shorts or these sometimes reduced giving an appearance of axillary position, 1-flowered, or cymose to fasciculate and 2-6-flowered, sessile to pedunculate, bracteate or bracts reduced. Flowers subsessile to pedicellate, bisexual, monomorphic. Calyx limb deeply 5-lobed, lobes spatulate to obovoid. Corolla white to cream or pale green, campanulate to subrotate, usually densely sericeous outside, variously pubescent inside; lobes 5[-10], convolute in bud. Stamens 5, inserted in corolla throat, partially to fully exserted; filaments short; anthers dorsifixed. Ovary 2-celled, ovules many in each cell on axile placentas attached at center of septum; stigma ellipsoid or 2-lobed, exserted. Fruit generally yellowish brown, baccate, leathery to thickly fleshy or infrequently hard, globose, ellipsoid, or ovoid-globose, with calyx limb persistent; seeds numerous, medium-sized, ellipsoid, angled, or reniform, embedded in fleshy or mucilaginous pulp.
Calyx tube ovoid or campanulate; limb-tube shortly cylindrical or sometimes urceolate; lobes rapidly developing as flower buds open, separated by narrow or wide sinuses often with a rudimentary lobe in each, often differing between male and female flowers, in male and/or hermaphrodite flowers variable in number and unequal, mostly oblong, ovate or spathulate or sometimes virtually reduced, or in female and/or hermaphrodite flowers (4)5 subequal or equal, ovate, broadly ovate or circular, sometimes clawed at base.
Corolla subrotate, the tube shorter than the lobes and mostly subequal to or shortly exceeding (not in the Flora Zambesiaca area) the calyx limb-tube; tube glabrous at base, densely silky pubescent above outside, with a distinct band of long hairs inside; lobes contorted to the left in bud, usually broadly ovate to circular and spreading, pubescent outside, inside with puberulous margin.
Spines straight, those on young or coppice shoots opposite and decussate, borne above leaf nodes (TAB. 127/1), those on older stems borne above cushion shoots and/or brachyblasts, paired, solitary (alternate or not) or absent (from specimen if not from plant) (TAB. 127/2 &3), often developing into fertile branches (long internode at base) (TAB. 127/4).
Inflorescences terminal or subterminal, few-branched, on cushion shoots and brachyblasts, functionally female/hermaphrodite flowers solitary or 2–3; functionally male/hermaphrodite flowers 1–8(or more); peduncles present or reduced; pedicels short or well developed, often accrescent; bracts and bractlets absent, rudimentary or filiform.
Flowers sweet-scented, (4)5-merous, rather small, hermaphrodite or functionally male and female (whether plants are functionally male or female or whether different expressions at different times is not known).
Leaves deciduous, paired and well spaced on young or coppice shoots, or clustered on cushion shoots and/or brachyblasts, glabrous to tomentose, petiolate; stipules, triangular, apiculate.
Ovary 2(3)-locular, the placenta attached to the septum; ovules numerous embedded in placental mass; style as long as tube or exserted; pollen presenter ellipsoid or cylindrical, grooved.
Brachyblasts (short axillary densely crowded branchlets) frequently developing into simple or branched fertile branches (nodes crowded at base) (TAB. 127/5).
Seeds embedded in a pulpy matrix, discoid or compressed ellipsoid, with slightly raised fine reticulation on testa.
Fruit with seed masses divided by the septum; crowned by persistent and sometimes accrescent calyx limb.
Mostly spiny many-stemmed shrubs or small trees, occasionally small pyrophytic subshrubs.
Filaments short; anthers exserted, oblong, apiculate; pollen grains single.
