Source:
SSA
Description:
Herbs, shrubs, or small, slender trees. Leaves paripinnate; leaflets usually in more than 10 pairs, oblong, entire, often unequal-sided at base, stipulate. Flowers yellow, in racemes or panicles, rarely solitary or 2, bracteate. Calyx with widely campanulate tube; lobes often subequal. Petals: vexillum nearly always streaked or spotted with purple, clawed, with 2 free or adnate appendages at base; appendages rarely 0; wings clawed, sometimes eared; keel with claw +/- equal to limb. Stamens diadelphous; anthers uniform. Ovary sessile or stalked, many-ovuled, sometimes pilose with soft spreading hairs; style incurved, with small, capitate stigma. Pod linear or sometimes oblong, compressed, 4-angled or -winged, 2-valved or subindehiscent, usually septate within. Seeds 8-50, ellipsoid, oblong or subquadrate. x= 6, 7, 8 (aneuploids, polyploidy).
Distribution:
Species over 50, cosmopolitan in warm parts, generally in seasonally or permanently wet places; +/- 18 in sthn Afr., widespread from Namibia and the four northern provinces into KwaZulu-Natal, Free State and Northern Cape.
Classification:
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