7185.000 Premna L.

Trees, shrubs, climbers or subshrubs, glabrous to densely hairy. Leaves petiolate, opposite or 3–4-whorled, simple, entire or dentate, often with minute spherical glands, aromatic when crushed. Inflorescences terminal, usually many-flowered, with flowers in cymes corymbosely, racemosely or paniculately arranged, rarely the inflorescences axillary. Flowers small and dull-coloured; calyx usually actinomorphic, truncate to 3–5-dentate or 2–5-lobed, or sometimes c. 2-lipped; corolla tube short, infundibuliform or cylindric, villous or with a ring of hairs; limb 2-lipped, with the posterior lip 2-fid or emarginate and the anterior 3-fid or 3-partite, with the lobes subequal or the median one the largest. Fruit drupaceous, small, with a thin fleshy mesocarp and bony endocarp; calycine cup persistent, often venose. Seeds oblong, without endosperm.

Worldwide: c. 200 species in tropical and warm regions of the Old World

Zimbabwe: 1 taxon.