Type species: Noronhia emarginata (Lam.) Thouars (basionym: Olea emarginata Lam.)
Synonyms: Binia, Noronhaea
Distribution: Madagascar (40) and the Comores (1)
Number of species: 41
Description : From D'Arcy (1976): Trees, branches often stout, smooth, mostly glabrous. Leaves persistent or deciduous, opposite, rarely verticillate, entire or emarginate, often coriaceous, sometimes punctate, the venation pinnate, often obscure, the minor venation obscure, bud scales sometimes hairy; petioles mostly short, stout, sometimes contrasting in color with leaf and stem. Inflorescences axillary or falsely terminal, mostly short panicles or racemes, sometimes fascicles or solitary, subtended by small bracts at the dicotomies; pedicels often stout, subtended by bractlets. Flowers perfect 4-merous; calyx small, campanulate, the lobes deltoid or obtuse, often unequal and the outer pair overlapping in the bud; corolla thick, glabrous, valvate, drying dark, uroceolate, cyathiform, campanulate or rotate, the tube sometimes much reduced and the limb and obes spheroidal, the base inside forming a flat platform or with an elevated coronule (nectary) surrounding the fertile parts; stamens 2 (4), inserted on the tube, the anthers large, compressed, basifixed, subsessile, dehiscing laterally, rarely introrsely; ovary conical, glabrous, bilocular with 2 anatropous, pendulous, axile ovules in each locule, one ovule aborting, the style short or wanting, the stigma short, thick, 2-lobed. Fruits globose or pointed, stoney drupes; seed large, the raphae ramified and conspicuous against the integument, the endosperm wanting, the cotyledons plano-convex, thick, the radicle superior, conical, short and thick.
Maintained by Eva Wallander | Last updated: 2014-06-21