Plants erect, evergreen shrubs, often scrambling or climbing and up to 3 m tall, sometimes a liana with stms up to 13 m long. Branches and branchlets slender. Leaves opposite; petioles 0.5-1 cm long; blades aromatic, elliptical or narrowly lanceoalte, 2.3-10 cm long, 0.8-4.5 cm wide, entire, lower surfaces almost glabrous, upper surfaces glabrous, bases cuneate and acute, tips obtuse or shortly acuminate. Cymes axillary or supraxillary, with 3-7 flowers, 4.5-9.5 cm long. Calyces bell-shaped, 5-lobed, greeen, tubes about 4 mm long; corollas united, hypocrateriform, with 5 lobes; tubes straight, (1.5-)2-3.5(-4) cm long; lobes spreading, 0.4-0.8(-1.1) cm long,, white or tinged with purple, fragrant; stamens long exserted, filaments reddish to purple, pubescent at the base; ovaries superior, glabrous; styles glabrous, purplish, tip bifid. Drupes splitting into 4 pyrenes, grey-yellow or bright green, turning black-brown, obovoid to subglobose, about 10 mm long, 6-19 mm in diameter, 4-lobed.
Volkameria inermis is native to coastal regions of India sotuheast Asia, Australia, and the Pacific Islands but has been widely introducend in tropical and subtropical regions throughou tthe world. It has been planted as an ornamental hedge (growing over trellises, with Bougainvillea), in at the Maansoor Hotel in Hargeysa.
Reference
El Mokni, R. Kasri, M, & El. Aouni, M.H. (2013) Volkameria inermis (Lamiaceae) a new alien species naturalized to the Tunisian coast, first record for North-Africa. Flora Mediterranea 23: 117-12