Euclea racemosa L.

Low shrubs 60 cm-5 m high or small trees 2-6 m high, evergreen, densely branched; trunk 10-15 cm in diam., bark usually grey and smooth; branchlets glabrous, angular, often reddish. Leaves alternate, subopposite or opposite, subsessile to distinctly petioled, quite glabrous, thickly coriaceous, somewhat paler below than on upper surface, drying a reddish to pinkish brown, oblanceolate to obovate, rarely almost elliptic, 1.5-5 cm long and 7-15 mm wide, usually about 2.5 cm long and 1-1.3 cm wide; base distinctly cuneate; apex subobtuse rounded and obtuse; midrib and mostly only the secondary nerves raised on upper surface, somewhat raised or not raised on lower surface with midrib distinctly raised in lower half and gradually disappearing into leaf surface in top half of the leaf; margin thickened, raised, involute, entire; petiole 1-4 mm long, wrinkled. Inflorescence an axillary raceme, glabrous 1.5-4 cm long, 8-20 flowered; pedicels 2-5 mm long; bracts lanceolate, caducous; female racemes usually small and more compact than males. Flowers dioecious, creamy white, cup-shaped, pendulous. Male flowers 4 mm long and 3 mm wide, larger than female flowers, usually tetramerous. Calyx more or less saucer-shaped with 4 triangular lobes (occasionally lobes 5-6), quite glabrous. Corolla glabrous or with a few scattered hairs on outside; tube half the length of the corolla or shorter; lobes subobtuse to obtuse. Stamens 25-51 cm two rows, single or in groups of 2 or three together; filaments varying in length, from practically absent to 1 mm long, glabrous; anthers lanceolate to narrowly oblong, 1.5-2 mm long, glabrous except for a few hairs at apex, dehiscing by longitudinal slits. Ovary rudimentary, hairy (occasionally fairly large with a style and surrounded by a scalloped disc and then flower usually pentamerous). Female flowers cup-shaped to bell-shaped, 14 mm long and 3 mm wide at the mouth. Calyx shallowly cup-shaped; lobes 4 (rarely 5), half the length of the tube, ovate. Corolla deeply cleft; lobes ovate subobtuse, tube shorter than the lobes. Staminodes 4-8, linear to strap-shaped, appressed to ovary, as long as or slightly exceeding the ovary, occasionally with a few hairs at the apex. Ovary subglobose, densely covered with short bristles; 4-celled with one pendulous ovule in each cell; style stout, glabrous, articulated to ovary; branches 2, each bilobed. Fruit with a thin, soft, fleshy layer when quite ripe, globose, 5-7 mm in diam., usually one-seeded by abortion, occasionally 2 seeds present. Seeds globose or hemispherical, greyish to brown, very finely wrinkled, 4-5 mm in diam., divided into three segments by two thin curved lines and a groove; endosperm flinty, grey, not ruminate; embryo somewhat curved.

Dry montane and dry lowland forest, thickets and grassland. From near sea level to elevations of 1,525 metres.

The ripe fruit are eaten.

Can be grown by seedlings.