Aphloia
Aphloia is an evergreen shrub or small tree reaching up to 10 m high. Young branches are hairless, brown in colour, have stripes along their length and wings extending from the nodes, narrowing downwards and carries alternately set leaves in two rows. The blades of the leaves are elliptic in shape, with a pointy or rounded tip, a (broad) wedge-shaped foot and a saw-toothed edge, particularly in from below midlength to the tip. The flowers are with one, two or three together in the axils of the leaves on up to 2 cm long greenish stalks (or pedicels), which also carry bracts of up to 1.8 mm long that are split in three lobes. Aphloia contains a single species, Aphloia theiformis. Aphloia occurrs in East Africa, Madagascar, the Mascarene Islands and the Seychelles.