8383.000 Pavetta L.

Shrubs or small trees, occasionally suffrutices. Leaves opposite; lamina with bacterial nodules (easily visible as black dots when leaf is held up to the light). Flowers few-many, borne in corymbs, very lax to capitate. Bracts connate, stipule-like. Flowers bisexual, 4-merous. Corolla white to creamy or greenish. Ovary 2-locular. Fruit a spherical drupe, in our species black and shining when ripe. Seeds 2, hemispheric.

Derivation of name: Apparently this was a historic name given to plants of this genus in Malabar, a coastal region in southwestern India.

Worldwide: 400 species in the Old World tropics.

Rwanda: 3 taxa.