Description:
Perennial herbs or subshrubs, prostrate or erect. Leaves pinnately 3-9-foliolate, less often partly or all 1-foliolate; leaflets often large and venose; stipules persistent, free, acuminate; stipels present. Inflorescences mostly terminal, spike-like racemes or panicles; primary bracts ovate or lanceolate, persistent or deciduous; secondary bracts and bracteoles absent. Calyx 5-lobed; 3 lower lobes equal, and longer than upper pair (often appearing to be lower pair due to twisting of pedicel). Corolla yellowish or purplish; standard rounded or obovate, narrowed into a claw; wings oblong-falcate, adhering to keel, which is slightly incurved and obtuse. Stamens : vexillary stamen free; anthers uniform. Ovary sessile or shortly stipitate, 2-many-ovuled; style filiform, recurved at apex; stigma terminal, capitate. Pods folded like a concertina, mostly enclosed in persistent calyx, subsessile, constricted between seeds, segments ovate, inflated, 1-seeded and indehiscent. Seeds subglobose or compressed, oblong-ellipsoid; hilum lateral, aril not developed.
Distribution:
Species 20, Old World tropics; sthn trop. Afr. 2, Angola, Zambia, Malawi, Mozambique.
Source:
SSTA
Classification:
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