Euclea lancea Thunb.

Shrubs 1-3 m high, evergreen, bark blackish-grey; branchlets glabrous, brownish with a silvery shine to deep red-brown in colour, smooth. Leaves alternate, subopposite or sometimes in pseudo-whorls at apex of young branches, subsessile to very shortly petioled, glaucous, slightly paler below, thickly coriaceous, quite glabrous, linear-elliptic to elliptic or occasionally oblanceolate-elliptic, 3.5-7 cm long and 7-15 mm wide; base narrowly cuneate; apex acute, rather abruptly mucronate; nerves finely reticulately raised on both surfaces; margin somewhat thickened, not involute, flat; petiole up to 2 mm long; stipules absent. Inflorescence 5-9-flowered, branched, glabrous except for a few stalked glands, axillary, 1-1.5 cm long, pedicels 6-8 mm long; bracts oblanceolate, boat-shaped, glandular, margins fringed; female inflorescence usually somewhat smaller than the male. Flowers dioecious, urceolate or globose-urceolate, pendulous, cream. Male flowers 3 mm long. Calyx about 1/4 of the length of the corolla, saucer-shaped, sparsely hairy, cleft about halfway down the tube, lobes 5-6, fringed on the margins. Corolla globose-urceolate, glabrous in lower half and increasingly hairy upwards especially on the fringed lobes; lobes 5-6, very short, 1/6 of length of tube, ovate to oblong-ovate. Stamens 15-22, in two rows and often in pairs together; filaments glabrous, up to 1 mm long; anthers lanceolate to oblong-lanceoate glabrous. Ovary rudimentary, situated on a fringed disc; styles hairy, 2, slender, glabrous. Female flowers 3 mm long. Calyx saucer-shaped; lobes 5-6, cleft about 1/2 way down tube, fringed, deltoid. Corolla urceolate and much constricted below the throat. Staminodes absent. Ovary ovoid-conical, situated on a fringed disc, densely covered with short, white bristles, 3-4-celled with a single pendulous ovule in each cell; styles 2-3, glabrous, slender, usually exserted, notched, oblique. Fruit subglobose, subglabrous, 7-9 mm in diam., one-seeded.