Tennantia is a monotypic genus of flowering plants belonging to the family Rubiaceae.[1] It only contains one known species, Tennantia sennii
It is a shrub, 1- tall, with whitish stems that are puberulous when young. The leaf-blades are elliptic to narrowly obovate in shape. They are 1- long and 0.5- wide. With rounded and sometimes minutely apiculate at the apex, glabrous or puberulous; stipules are 1- long. Calyx with limb-tube about 1.2mm long, with lobes about 0.8mm long. The corolla is white or tinged pink; with the perianth tube 1.5- long; the lobes are about 5mm long. The fruit (or seed capsule) is black, 5- in diameter and glabrous. The seeds are about 4mm long.[2]
Its native range is from Somalia to Kenya and Tanzania in eastern Tropical Africa.
The genus name of Tennantia is in honour of James Robert Tennant (b. 1928), a British botanist working at Kew Gardens.[3] The Latin specific epithet of sennii honors Lorenzo Senni (1879 - 1954), an Italian botanist who collected the type specimen. Both the genus and the species were first described and published in Kew Bull. Vol.36 on page 511 in 1981.[1]