Source:
SSA
Description:
Annual or perennial herbs, or softly woody undershrubs. Leaves 3-foliolate, with 1 or 2 leaflets near stem resembling stipules; stipules minutely tuberculate or 0. Flowers in axillary umbels, rarely solitary; bracts 3-bracteolate. Calyx variable; lobes equal, or subequal, or rarely calyx 2-lipped. Petals free or sometimes adnate to base of calyx tube; vexillum sessile or clawed; wings sometimes eared, clawed and gibbous; keel incurved or inflexed, beaked, gibbous. Stamens diadelphous, vexillary stamen free, alternate filaments expanded at apex. Ovary sessile or subsessile, many-ovuled; style inflexed above ovary, with terminal or lateral sometimes capitate stigma. Pod oblong or linear, straight or curved, terete, turgid, rarely planocompressed, 2-valved, usually septate within. Seeds subglobose or lenticular. x= 6, 7 (aneuploids, polyploidy, B-chromosomes).
Distribution:
Species +/- 100, fairly cosmopolitan; 1 in sthn Afr.: Lotus discolor E.Mey. subsp. discolor, the four northern provinces, Swaziland, KwaZulu-Natal and Eastern Cape; several other species introduced and rare as escapes.
Classification:
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