A note on Colpoon (Santalaceae)

Abstract

When, in 1989, I wrote an account of Santalaceae for Flora Zambesiaca (which account will not be published for several more years), I had no hesitation in including Colpoon Berg, in Osyris L., as A. De Candolle (1857) had originally done. The morphology of stem and leaf is identical: distinctive flattened twigs, branchlets ribbed by vascular strands running out into the midrib of the leaf, and both leaf surfaces closely and minutely white-dotted (these dots are probably the ‘abundant cluster and sphaerocrystals noted in the mesophyll of Osyris abyssinica’ by Metcalfe & Chalk (1950, p. 1197)).