Lannea A.rich. In Guill.

Trees, shrubs or suffrutices; young plants usually with stellate indumentum; bark tough and used as string. Leaves alternate, imparipinnate, trifoliolate or rarely unifoliolate, usually clustered at the end of the branches; leaflets sessile or petiolulate, opposite or subopposite, usually entire. Inflorescences often produced before the leaves, ♂ essentially paniculate but the branchlets reduced to mere knobs on which the flowers are clustered so that they seem spike-like, ♀ racemose to spicate; sometimes the spikelike panicles are themselves branched. Plants dioecious, sometimes the trees being entirely ♂ and others producing apparently bisexual flowers in which the stamens may or may not be functional. Male flowers: calyx 4-partite, segments imbricate; petals 4, imbricate; stamens 8, with the subulate filaments inserted below the disk; anthers dorsifixed; disk somewhat cup-shaped, 8-crenulate with a 4-cleft vestigial ovary at the centre. Female flowers: hermaphrodite or perhaps functionally ♀ only; perianth as in ♂; stamens shorter than ovary, but normally antheriferous; ovary ovoid or subglobose, 4-locular, with 2–3 abortive locules; ovule pendent from a long funicle attached at the apex of the locule; styles 3–4, free, subterminal; stigmas simple or subcapitate. Drupe compressed, obovoid, ovoid or ± oblong, showing persistent separated style-bases; mesocarp thin; endocarp woody, surface ridged and alveolate, with 1–2 ovate opercules at the apex. Seeds somewhat reniform, compressed; cotyledons plano-convex.

Along roadsides and inhabited places at low altitude, largely confined to the seasonal areas.