Description :

• Perennial herbs or undershrubs up to 0.50 m tall
• Leaves unifoliolate or digitately trifoliolate, glabrous or densely pubescent; stipules various
• Flowers greenish yellow to pale pink, sometimes with purplish marks, solitary or 2-nate, opposite leaves, bracteate
• Calyx with shortly campanulate tube; lobes subequal, sometimes with 2 upper and laterals approximate
• Petals : vexillum sometimes hooded and keeled; with short, sharply reflexed, channelled claw; wings clawed; keel linear, spirally contorted, spurred at base
• Stamens diadelphous, enclosed and coiled with keel; anthers unequal
• Ovary sessile, many-ovuled; style enclosed in spiral keel, with terminal stigma
• Pod oblong, turgid, many-seeded, dehiscent
• Seeds oblique-cordiform, with a deep hilar sinus

Nomenclature:

• Bolusia Benth.
  • Bentham: t. 1163 (1873)
  • Hutchinson: 360 (1964)
  • Polhill: 995 (1971)

Distribution & Notes:

• Global : Species 5 or 6, drier parts of Africa south of the equator
• Southern Africa : Species 2, Namibia and Northern Cape