Salvadora australis Schweick.

Trees or shrubs, often bushy, usually up to about 3.3 m tall occasionally taller, up to 6.75 m (fide Ward), sometimes emitting an unpleasant odour, divaricately branched; young branchlets terete, grey tomentulose-puberulous. Leaves rather thick, grey puberulous, spreading to spreading-ascending, linear-oblong, 2-7 cm long and 0.3-1.7 cm broad, rounded at the apex, minutely mucronate or occasionally retuse, long and narrowly cuneate at the base into a short to very short petiole, nerves and veins obscure above, prominent beneath. Panicles terminal and axillary in the upper leaves, about as long as or shorter than the leaves; branches long but the peduncle often so abbreviated that the inflorescence appears to be a cluster of spikes; flowers subsessile and opposite or subopposite. Calyx campanulate, about 3 mm long, densely puberulous outside, obscurely stipitate at the base, 4-lobed; lobes obtuse, almost as long as the tube. Corolla united at the base and with a small stipe below, about 4 mm long; lobes subacute narrowing towards the apex, the upper portion becoming reflexed. Stamens inserted on the corolla tube; free portion of the filament about 1.5 mm long; anther about 0.75 mm long, blunt at the apex; quadrate glands alternating with the stamens, usually 0.5 mm long and 0.5 mm broad. Ovary more or less globose, minutely puberulous, with a small basal stipe; style very short but distinct; stigma inconspicuous, stigmatic surface terminal. Fruit a drupe, globose, about 5 mm diam., minutely puberulous, subtranslucent, the dry calyx and corolla persisting at the base; seed solitary exalbuminous, with thick cotyledons enclosing a thick plumule on the basal portions.

A tropical plant. It grows in hot, low altitude bushveld. It is often on floodplains and salty flats. It can be on termite mounds. In Zimbabwe it grows up to 700 m above sea level.

The fruit have a sweet peppery taste.