Triangle Flowered Wild Medlar

apiculata: with a short sharp point (apiculate)

Shrub, often with somewhat scandent long branches, or small tree. Bark greyish-brown to reddish-brown, smooth or finely ridged; young branches dark plum-coloured, lenticellate and hairless. Leaves opposite, elliptic-oblong, ovate to lanceolate, up to 17 cm long, distinctly acuminate at the apex, glossy green, mostly hairless but sometimes finely pubescent beneath; margin entire but wavy; petiole 0.5-1.5 cm long. Stipules joined at the base and a filiform tip, 3-9.5 mm long. Flowers in lax to dense untidy axillary heads, greenish-white, up to 1 cm in diameter with a conspicuous tuft of fine white hairs in the throat of the corolla. Fruit subglobose, sometimes asymmetric, 1.5-2.5 cm in diameter, green to brown, hairless.

Frequent in the E Highlands; local elsewhere

DRC, Rwanda, Uganda, Sudan, Ethiopia, Kenya, Tanzania, Malawi, Mozambique, Zambia and Zimbabwe.

Vangueria apiculata is a species of flowering plant in the family Rubiaceae. It is found from Ethiopia to South Tropical Africa.