Description :

• Herbs, undershrubs, or shrubs
• Leaves alternate, rarely opposite
• Flowers papilionaceous, in terminal or lateral racemes or occasionally solitary
• Sepals unequal; 3 outer ones usually sepaloid and 2 inner ones (wings) larger and petaloid, all free or 2 anterior ones united
• Petals 3-5; lower one keel-shaped, usually with a multifid crest below apex; 2 lateral ones usually reduced, and posterior one often absent
• Disc sometimes present
• Stamens (4 or 5)8(9), rarely 7 fertile with 1 staminode
• Ovary 2-locular; style curved or bent; stigma oblique
• Fruit a membranous capsule, compressed
• Seeds : sometimes only 1 developed, usually with a silky indumentum and an aril
• x = 17 (7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 16, 19, 23) (polyploidy)

Nomenclature:

• Polygala L.
  • Linnaeus: 701 (1753)
  • Harvey: 80 (1860)
  • Levyns: 9 (1955)
  • Exell: 307 (1960)
  • Friedrich-Holzhammer & Merxmüller: 1 (1968)
  • Paiva: 205 (1994)
  • Paiva: 137 (1998)

Distribution & Notes:

• Global : Species ± 600, cosmopolitan in temperate and warm countries
• Southern Africa : Species ± 88, Namibia, Botswana, Northern Province, North-West, Gauteng, Mpumalanga, Swaziland, Free State, KwaZulu-Natal, Lesotho and with many concentrated in the S Western Cape