Description :

• Erect shrubs or shrublets with adpressed or slightly spreading silky pubescence
• Leaves pinnately 3-foliolate; leaflets elliptic to lanceolate, resinous-glandular on lower surface; stipules small
• Flowers yellow or lined with purple, in terminal panicles together with several subcapitate axillary racemes; bracts ovate, caducous
• Calyx 5-lobed; lobes subequal, upper pair joined
• Petals : vexillum orbicular, reflexed, eared; keel incurved at apex
• Stamens with uniform anthers
• Ovary subsessile, elongate, 4-6-ovuled, velvety hairy; style thickened above, flattened below the small, capitate stigma
• Pod linear-oblong, inflated, obliquely acute, compressed, 2-valved, obliquely depressed between seeds with transverse grooves
• Seeds rounded, compressed
• x = 11 (8) (polyploidy)

Nomenclature:

• *Cajanus DC.
  • Candolle: 85 (1813) name conserved
  • Hutchinson: 421 (1964)
  • Verdcourt: 709 (1971)

Distribution & Notes:

• Global : Species 2, one native to West Africa
• Southern Africa : * Cajanus cajan (L.) Millsp., Dhal or Pigeon-pea, widely cultivated throughout the tropics and partially naturalised in Namibia, the four northern provinces, Swaziland and KwaZulu-Natal