Compilation
Rauvolfia natalensis

Shrub or tree 2–40 m high; trunk 5–100 cm in diameter; bark smooth and lenticellate or rough and corky, longitudinally fissured, grey to brown; wood soft; branches and branchlets brown, lenticellate, often 4–5-angled or -winged, with conspicuous leaf scars. Leaves in whorls of 3–6, confined to the apices of branches, petiolate; blade narrowly obovate to elliptic, 1.8–60(–70) cm long, 0.8–15(–19) cm wide, subacute to acute at the apex, cuneate or attenuate at the base, sometimes decurrent into the petiole, glossy, glabrous; 12–35(–45) pairs of secondary veins; petiole 0–60 mm long, glabrous. Inflorescence congested, on ultimate branches only, up to 450-flowered; peduncle 5.8–13.5 cm long, glabrous; pedicels 0.1–2 mm long, glabrous. Flowers fragrant; sepals ovate, 0.5–1.3 mm long, 0.3–1.5 mm wide, obtuse at the apex, glabrous, sometimes slightly ciliate; corolla hypocrateriform, (greenish) white; tube broadly cylindrical, 3.2–5.5 mm long, densely setose in the mouth and at base of lobes; lobes ovate or obovate, 0.6–1.6 mm long, 0.8–1.6 mm wide; stamens inserted 1.9–4.2 mm above the corolla base; disk 0.2–0.7 mm high, annular or cupular; pistil 1.2–3.8 mm long; ovary of 2 free or partly fused carpels, globose to obovoid, glabrous; style 0.6–3.2 mm longr. Fruit dark red or black, often lenticellate, syncarpous when both carpels develop, obcordate, bilobed, 10–30 mm long, 7–23 mm in diameter; when only one carpel developes, subglobose to ellipsoid and 5–20 mm in diameter; seeds 7–13 mm long. Fig. 21 (p. 62).