Scaly Bark Jackal Coffee

Usually shrubs, less often small trees. Leaves petiolate, sometimes with domatia, without bacterial nodules. Inflorescences axillary and opposite, sessile to subsessile, usually many-flowered and strongly contracted. Flowers (4-)5-9(-12)-merous, usually sweetly scented, sessile, bisexual. Calyx very variable. Corolla usually white, sometimes greenish, cream, or rose, salver-shaped. Ovary 2-locular. Fruit drupaceous.

Deciduous shrub or small tree. Bark pale brown, often slightly scaling; branches often with knobbly leaf scars, velvety when young. Leaves opposite, ovate, elliptic to obovate, up to 9 × 4 cm, pale green, usually covered with short soft hairs, sometimes only hairy on the midrib; hair-tuft domatia present; petiole 1-6 mm, velvety. Flowers in tight c. 5-flowered heads along the branches, strongly scented, appearing before the leaves. Corolla greenish-white to cream, 1-1.5cm in diameter. Fruit almost round, c. 7 mm in diameter, crowned with the remains of the calyx, red when ripe.

Malawi, Mozambique, Zambia and Zimbabwe

Tricalysia is a genus of flowering plants in the family Rubiaceae. The genus is found in tropical and southern Africa and on the islands in the Western Indian Ocean.