Description :

• Herbs, prostrate or climbing, or shrubs, sometimes villous
• Leaves pinnately 3-foliolate, rarely 1- or 5- or 7-foliolate; stipules small, often deciduous
• Flowers fascicled or lower subsolitary, in axillary racemes; bracts small, setaceous
• Calyx often hairy, with campanulate tube; 2 upper lobes usually fused, lowest often the longest
• Petals : vexillum ovate or round, shortly clawed; wings narrow, eared, shortly clawed, adnate to keel; keel shortly clawed
• Stamens diadelphous, or vexillary stamen connate with others at middle; anthers uniform
• Ovary sessile or shortly stipitate, several- to many-ovuled, often villous; style filiform, with small stigma
• Pod linear to linear-oblong, straight or incurved, compressed, or rarely convex on both sides, 2-valved
• Seeds small; hilum small, central, elliptic, not arillate or with a vestigial rim-aril
• x = 10 (aneuploids)

Nomenclature:

• Galactia P.Browne
  • Browne: 298 (1756)
  • Harvey: 235 (1862)
  • Verdcourt: 578 (1971)

Distribution & Notes:

• Global : Species ± 50, mostly New World, tropical and subtropical
• Southern Africa : Species 1: Galactia tenuiflora (Willd.) Wight & Arn. var. villosa (Wight & Arn.) Benth., Mpumalanga, Swaziland and KwaZulu-Natal