Lotononis

Annual, perennial suffrutescent herbs or small shrubs. Leaves alternate or rarely opposite, usually petiolate, digitately 3(4-8)-foliolate, rarely simple or 1-foliolate; stipules small or foliaceous, usually single at each node, less commonly paired or 0. Flowers usually yellow (often partly orange, pink or white) or blue, rarely pink, pale purple, violet or white, axillary or terminal, usually solitary, sometimes 2- or 3-nate, or in heads, or sometimes head-like racemes, often pedunculate, usually bracteate. Calyx with campanulate tube, occasionally somewhat inflated; 4 upper lobes substantially united, lowest narrower than others, rarely lobes subequal. Petals: vexillum ovate to oblong with short or long claw, sometimes with 2 cushions at upper end of claw, glabrous or hairy outside; wings sometimes shorter than keel, clawed, eared at base; keel clawed, eared at base, usually gibbous. Stamens monadelphous, unequal, usually with tube split to base, open along upper (vexillar) side, rarely much united; anthers usually unequal, 4 oblong to linear and basifixed, 5 ovate and dorsifixed, carinal one intermediate. Ovary sessile or shortly stalked, few- to many-ovuled; style curved up and tapering, occasionally hairy towards base, with minutely capitate stigma. Pod subsessile or rarely long-stipitate, flat or turgid, linear to oblong or ovate. Seeds on long funicle, suborbicular to obliquely cordiform. x= 9, 14 ( polyploidy).