Vangueria Juss.

Unarmed or rarely spiny deciduous shrubs or small trees with glabrous to densely velvety foliage. Leaves paired, often quite large; stipules broad at base, hairy inside, connate into a short sheath at the base, produced into a linear or subulate appendage at the apex, deciduous or ± persistent. Inflorescences axillary divaricately branched cymes at opposite sides of nodes, usually many-flowered, often at leafless nodes and sometimes flowering when leaves are not fully developed; branches of cymes often rather elongate with regularly spaced shortly petiolate flowers. Calyx-tube hemispherical or depressed campanulate; limb divided into 5 triangular, oblong, linear or ligulate lobes. Corolla small, usually yellow or greenish yellow, often distinctly apiculate in bud (due to lobe appendages); corolla-tube shortly cylindrical or campanulate, glabrous or hairy outside, with a ring of deflexed hairs inside and densely hairy at the throat; lobes 5, narrowly triangular, mostly reflexed, sometimes with distinct narrow appendage at the apex. Anthers ovate or oblong, apiculate, shortly exserted. Ovary 5-locular; ovule solitary in each locule, pendulous; style filiform-cylindric, glabrous, shortly exserted; stigmatic club cylindrical, very shortly 5-lobed at the apex. Disk annular, slightly raised. Fruit large, indehiscent and fleshy, ± globose, often lobed or angular in dry state, (4–)5(–6)-locular, containing (4–)5(–6) pyrenes, sometimes bearing remains of calyx-limb, glabrous, often edible.