Bersama lucens, the glossy white ash and in Afrikaans blinkblaarwitessenhout (shiny leaf white “essen” wood), is a medium sized evergreen tree, sometimes only a shrub, reaching heights from 3 m to 10 m (SA Tree List No. 439).

The distribution covers a broad band along the South African east coast from the Eastern Province through KwaZulu-Natal and Swaziland into southern Mozambique and inland into eastern Mpumalanga and south-eastern Limpopo.

The habitat is riverine thicket, forests, particularly their margins, bushveld in rocky places and coastal dunes, from sea level to elevations around 1200 m (Coates Palgrave, 2002; Schmidt, et al, 2002; Van Wyk and Van Wyk, 1997; Pooley, 1993).