The genus Turraea is named after Georgio della Turre, professor of botany and director of the Botanic Garden at Padua from 1649-1683, who published a catalogue of the plants in the garden in 1660. The species name, obtusifolia, means blunt-leaved in Latin and refers to the often blunt tip of the leaves.

The common name, small honeysuckle tree, is derived from the superficial resemblance of the flowers of its sister species Turraea floribunda, the wild honeysuckle tree, to those of the honeysuckle, genus Lonicera, family Caprifoliaceae, but there is no real relationship between them. The flowers of T. floribunda have longer and narrower, greenish yellow petals and a strong, sweet scent, and the resemblance to honeysuckle is much stronger than in T. obtusifolia, whose starry white flowers are more often mistaken for a kind of jasmine. I frequently see visitors to Kirstenbosch spot a bush in flower and go over to smell the flowers, expecting to be rewarded with a sweet jasmine-like fragrance but being rebuffed, finding absolutely no scent whatsoever.

There are ± 50 species of Turraea occurring in Africa, Madagascar, the Mascarenes and the Comores and one that occurs in the tropical Far East. Six species occur in southern Africa: T. obtusifolia and T. floribunda (wild honeysuckle tree) occur in the Eastern Cape, KwaZulu-Natal and Swaziland ; T. nilotica (Lowveld honeysuckle tree) in Limpopo, Mpumalanga, and Swaziland ; T. pulchella (dwarf honeysuckle tree) in Eastern Cape and KwaZulu-Natal ; T. streyi in KwaZulu-Natal ; and T. zambesica (Zambezi turraea) in Botswana and Namibia.

The mahogany family (Meliaceae) is a large, tropical and subtropical family famous for its timber trees. It is made up of ± 50 genera and 800 species. In southern Africa there are six indigenous genera: Nymania, Ekebergia, Entandophragma, Pseudobersama, Trichilia and Turraea and four introduced and now naturalized genera: Cedrela, Khaya, Melia and Toona. Most South Africans would recognize Melia azedarach, known as the syringa or Persian lilac, a decorative garden tree introduced from India that has naturalized in many parts of the country and is now a declared invasive. Other members of the Meliaceae featured on plantzafrica.com to date include Nymania capensis, Ekebergia capensis, E. pterophylla, and Trichilia dregeana.