Brexia is a shrub or small tree, usually 3 to 7 m, but occasionally up to 10 m high. The leathery leaf blades are between 3.5 cm and 50 cm long and 2 cm and 11 cm wide. Each inflorescence may consist of usually between three and twelve flowers, but may occasionally contain as few as one and as many as seventeen flowers. The fully grown fruit is a drupe of 4 to 10 cm × 2 to 3 cm, ovoid to cylindric, with five prominent ribs. It contains brown or almost black, finely wrinkled, irregularly compressed, oval, keeled seeds of 4.5 to 8 cm× 3 to 3.5 mm. Brexia naturally grows on the coast of East Africa, on Madagascar, the Comoros and Seychelles.