Cliffortia burgersii E.G.H.Oliv. & Fellingham

A much-branched erect shrub to 1.5 m tall, mostly shorter and compact through grazing, dioecious but with an occasional fertile female flower on a male plant. Branches greenish yellow with a white crisped indumentum when young, becoming glabrous and brown with age, the bark then dull grey and splitting irregularly; internodes about 10 mm long. Leaves trifoliolate; vagina 0.8 mm long with 3 longitudinal ridges; stipules deltoid, 0.3 mm long; petiole 0.3-0.5 mm long; leaflets 3-7 x 0.4-0.5 mm, straight to falcate, ericoid, glabrous, obtuse to acute sometimes with a pale sharp apex, sulcate below with the groove hairy. Male flowers: bracteoles ovate, 1.3 mm long, scarious, ciliate, puberulous; pedicel and receptacle 1.5 mm long, glabrous but for a ring of hairs below the sepals; sepals 3-4, 3.0-3.5 x 2.0-2.2 mm, greenish, some with an occasional maroon-red longitudinal line, elliptic, acute, with a subapical tuft of crisped hairs adaxially; stamens 10-11(-13), filaments 2.0-3.0 mm long, maroon-red, glabrous; anthers 0.6-0.8 mm long, maroon-red with a white connective; an occasional male flower with a rudimentary ovary and well developed style and stigma. Female flowers: bracteoles rhomboid-ovate, 1.2 mm long, ciliate, villous inside, puberulous outside, the lower half scarious soon turning brown; pedicel 1.5 mm long lengthening rapidly to 3.7 mm in the fruit, puberulous with retrorse hairs; sepals 3-4, broadly elliptic, 2.0 x 1.3 mm, acute, mucronate, glabrous but pilose near the base abaxially and with a subapical tuft of long papillae soon shriveling [as 'shrivelling'], sepals persisting in the fruit; ovary emarginate at both ends, 1.7 x 1.8 mm, villous with retrorse hairs longer near the base, 3-4-winged; style solitary, 0.2-0.5 mm long, green, glabrous, sunken into a tube formed by a ring of short red-brown staminodes; stigma formed by the style expanding into a broad, deep red fimbriate pompom-like structure 1.7 mm across. Fruit: (8)9 x 10(11) mm, circular in outline, emarginate at the apex and base, prominently winged; the central portion ellipsoid, green, white woolly, equipped with irregular, hard, horny, deep red short spines and/or a narrow sturdy to more wing-like comb in place of the fourth wing; wings (2)3-4, somewhat crescent-shaped, 3(4) mm broad, reddish pink, undulate or flat, entire, glabrous or with a few short crisped hairs, and with numerous fine radiating ridges.