Description :

• Shrublets with many rigid, somewhat zigzag branches, with recurved, spinescent stipules
• Leaves few, small, bipinnate, with pinnae 1-2-jugate; leaflets small, few-jugate
• Flowers bisexual, sessile, in axillary, shortly pedunculate heads
• Calyx campanulate, with 5 lobes longer than tube
• Petals 5, valvate, linear, free almost to base
• Stamens 10, free, 5 opposite petals short, 5 alternating with petals longer but scarcely exceeding petals; anthers with minute, terminal, deciduous gland apically
• Ovary subsessile, 1(2)-ovuled, villous; style filiform, somewhat thickened above, with truncate stigma
• Pod broadly falcate-ovate or semiorbicular, plano-compressed, 1-seeded, with lower suture arched and winged
• Seed compressed-ovoid, smooth

Nomenclature:

• Xerocladia Harv.
  • Harvey: 278 (1862)
  • Ross: 130 (1975)
  • Schreiber: 19 (1967)

Distribution & Notes:

• Southern Africa : Species 1: Xerocladia viridiramis (Burch.) Taub. (= X. zeyheri Harv.), Namibia and Namaqualand (Northern Cape)