Description :

• Annual or perennial herbs, rarely shrubs
• Leaves usually digitately 5-11(-17)-foliolate; stipules mostly linear-subulate, adnate to base of petiole
• Flowers variously coloured, usually many in terminal and leaf-opposed racemes, alternate to verticillate; bracteoles often attached to calyx
• Calyx deeply divided almost to base, bilabiate, 3 lower lobes, at least, largely joined
• Petals : vexillum with a short claw and broad blade; wings broad, generally enveloping keel, connate at apex; keel beaked
• Stamens monadelphous; anthers alternately long and short
• Ovary usually sessile, 2-many-ovulate; style incurved, glabrous except for a ring of hairs beneath terminal stigma
• Pod dehiscent, compressed, usually constricted between seeds
• Seeds generally orbicular-rectangular to oblong-elliptic, with a sunken hilum
• x = 8 (9, 10, 13) (polyploidy)

Nomenclature:

• *Lupinus L.
  • Linnaeus: 721 (1753)
  • Hutchinson: 364 (1964)
  • Franco & Da Silva: 105 (1968)
  • Polhill: 995 (1971)
  • Stirton: 25 (1988)

Distribution & Notes:

• Global : Species ± 200, most numerous in the western parts of North and South America, with a second centre in Mediterranean Europe with some extensions in the highlands of E Africa
• Southern Africa : Species of * Lupinus are extensively used in the Western Cape as a cover crop or green manure and 4 species have become naturalised