Lydenburgia abbottii (A.e.van Wyk & M.Prins) Steenkamp, A.e.van Wyk & M.Prins

Evergreen tree up to 30 m high, unarmed and glabrous; bole with plank buttresses; bark greyish with pockets or layers of a powdery yellow pigment in the rhytidome, surface fairly smooth and exfoliating in rather thick, irregular scales, often tending to be dippled-scaly; young growth usually reddish-brown. Branchlets ± terete, reddish-brown and sparingly lenticellate when young. Leaves opposite; lamina elliptic to broadly elliptic, rarely ovate, broadly ovate to rotund (mainly on sucker shoots), (25-)50-70(-90) mm long, (15-)25-40(-70) mm wide, base attenuate, rarely rounded or truncate, apex acute, rarely obtuse, rounded or emarginate, margin glandular crenate, crenations usually 8-15 on each side, subcoriaceous, dark green and shiny above, whitish-green (particularly in fresh material) and dull below; venation (including the reticulation) ± raised above and below in dried material, indistinctly brochidodromous with a tendency to be eucamptodromous; principal lateral veins alternate or opposite, usually 4-6 pairs; petiole 6-10 mm long; stipules ± triangular, up to 2 mm long, rapidly caducous, axils of the latter ± glabrous or with a few short and inconspicuous brownish trichomes. Inflorescences pedunculate, ± regularly dichasial, axillary towards the apices of branchlets or occasionally confined to the distal pair of leaf axils thereby appearing to be terminal, many-flowered, usually longer than the leaves; peduncle usually 10-30 mm long; bracts minute, usually caducous. Flowers bisexual, pentamerous, c. 5 mm diam.; pedicels usually 4-5 mm long, articulated at or very near the base. Sepals greenish, subrotund with the apex rounded, 1 mm long, 1.5 mm wide, margin sparingly ciliolate. Petals white, oblong to elliptic-oblong, c. 3 mm long, 1.75 mm wide, apex rounded, margin minutely and irregularly erose-fimbriate (almost laciniate), in open flowers ± erect-spreading with the margin usually slightly dorsally recurved, sweetly scented. Stamens initially ± erect but very soon becoming strongly recurved with the anthers almost touching the sepals; filaments c. 1.5 mm long, arising from prominent sinuses in the disc with which they are united at the base, anthers c. 0.3 mm long, basifixed, versatile, latrorse, dehiscing by longitudinal slits. Disc fleshy, greenish, c. 2 mm diam., subentire with prominent sinuses at the points of stamen insertion. Ovary c. 1/3-immersed in and adnate to the disc, 3-locular, with 2 basal ovules per locule; ovules sessile, anatropous, collateral and hypotropous ventrally; style 0.25 mm long or apparently absent; stigma conspicuously 3-lobed (3 styles?). Fruit capsular, oblong and ± 3-gonous with the apex truncate and slightly concave, usually tipped with the persistent remains of the stigma, c. 6 mm long, 3.5 mm wide, dehiscing loculicidally to the base, valves with prominent septal ridges on the inner surface (not concealed in a narrow groove). Seeds usually 1-2(-4) per capsule, ± ovate-ellipsoid, 4-gonous, 3-4 mm long, 2-2.5 mm diam., exarillate and wingless; oily endosperm present. Flowers collected in spring and fruits in summer and winter.