Gardenia is a genus of 142 species of flowering plants in the coffee family, Rubiaceae, native to the tropical and subtropical regions of Africa, southern Asia, Australasia and Oceania. The genus was named by Carl Linnaeus after Dr. Alexander Garden (1730 to 1791), a Scottish-born American naturalist. They are evergreen shrubs and small trees growing to 1 to 15 metres tall. The leaves are opposite or in whorls of three or four, 5 to 50 centimetres long and 3 to 25 centimetres broad, dark green and glossy with a leathery texture. The flowers are solitary or in small clusters, white, or pale yellow, with a tubular-based corolla with 5 to 12 lobes (petals) from 5 to 12 centimetres diameter. Flowering is from about mid-spring to mid-summer and many species are strongly scented.

The spectacular, large white and yellow flowers with their sweet scent, attracts passers-by from a distance to this small, much-branched tree. The smooth, glossy, golden yellow fruits add to this spectacle in the bushveld, thicket, and woodland and on grassy plains. Gardenia cornuta commonly known as Natal Gardenia or Horned Gardenia in English and Wilde-appel or Natalkatjiepiering in Afrikaans is a shrub or multi-branched small tree, 3 to 5 m tall, with erect and spreading main branches, branchlets sometimes with thick thorns, a trunk that is whitish grey, the bark is smooth, often flaking into thin peels. Leaves are smooth and crowded at the ends of twigs, usually in whorls of three, light glossy green, short-stalked, 20 to 30 mm long and broad, margins smooth; stipules joined to form a ring around the node.