476 EBENACE® (Hiern). | Maba. 
III. MABA, J. R. & G. Forst. 
Flowers nearly always dicecious and usually trimerous, solitary or 
cymose. Calyx campanulate, oblong or cup-shaped, lobed or trun- 
cate. Corolla campanulate or tubular ; lobes sinistrorsely contorted in 
bud as seen from above. Stamens in the male flowers 3 or more, 
usually glabrous, in the female flowers obsolete or represented by 
staminodes. Ovary in the male flowers abortive, in the female 
flowers 3- or 6-celled, 6-ovuled; styles 1-3 or in the male flowers 
obsolete. Fruit baccate, usually moderate in size. 
Trees or shrubs, with alternate and quite entire leaves, and axillary or rarely 
lateral inflorescence, 
Species about 70, widely distributed over the warmer parts of the world. 
1. M. natalensis (Harv. Thes. Cap. ii. 7, t. 110); a shrub, about 
10-20 ft. high, soon becoming glabrous ; branches numerous, pallid, 
slender, spreading at a wide angle; branchlets divaricate, flexuous, 
puberulous, leafy ; leaves oval or ovate, obtuse or mucronate at the 
apex, firmly membranous, flat except at the narrowly revolute 
margin, shining and deep green above, paler beneath, delicately 
veiny, 3-12 in. long, 1—j, in. broad: petioles puberulous, !;-5 in. 
long ; flowers white, dicecious. Female flowers solitary, axillary, 
3 in. long ; pedunele ,1;—,'; in. long ; calyx },—} in. long, cup-shaped, 
truncate, entire, deep green, glabrous, semi-ellipsoidal ; corolla ;2; in. 
long, silvery-silky, 3-lobed ; lobes 2 in. long, diverging, oblong, 
acute, apiculate or rounded ; stamens or staminodes 6-9, free from 
or inserted at the base of the corolla, uniseriate, 1; in. long, glabrous ; 
filaments short, subulate; anthers erect, without pollen; ovary 
conical, glabrous ; style as long as the ovary, glabrous, trifid at the 
apex, 3-celled; cells 2-ovuled; fruit spheroidal, glabrous, pale- 
chestnut in colour, +—% in. long, 1-1 in. in diam., tipped with the 
persistent style, based with the eup of the non-accrescent calyx, 
l-seeded. Hiern in Trans. Cambr. Phil. Soc. xii. 131. Ebenus 
natalensis, O. Kuntze, Rev. Gen. Pl. ii. 408. 
Coast Reeion: East London Diy. ; in a wooded gulley near the mouth of 
the Nahoon (Kahoon) River, 20 ft., Galpin, 5665! 
Eastern ReGion: Natal; near Durban, Gerrard § McKen, 675! Gerrard, 
110! Cooper, 2695! Inanda, Wood, 1414! 
IV. DIOSPYROS, Linn. 
Flowers usually dicecious, cymose or solitary, usually tetramerous 
or pentamerous. Calyx lobed or truncate, often accrescent in fruit. 
Corolla-lobes usually obtuse and more or less spreading, sinistrorsely 
contorted in bud as seen from above. Stamens in the male flowers 
4 or more, usually about 16 and in two rows, in the female flowers 
obsolete or usually represented by 4-8 staminodes. Ovary in the 
male flowers abortive or rudimentary or obsolete, in the female 
