Description :

• Perennial herbs, climbing or trailing
• Leaves pinnately 3-foliolate, stipulate
• Flowers small, in axillary racemes, or flowers paired or fascicled in leaf axils; bracts small
• Calyx sometimes densely hairy, with cylindric-campanulate tube, 4- or 5-lobed; 2 upper lobes somewhat fused
• Petals : vexillum obovate or rounded, narrowed to base, glabrous or with few hairs near middle; wings clawed, adnate to keel; keel nearly straight, shorter than wings, clawed
• Stamens monadelphous; alternate anthers small, abortive
• Ovary sessile, linear, many-ovuled, sometimes hairy; style short, thick, with capitate stigma
• Pod linear, 2-valved, septate, tipped with persistent and hooked style
• Seeds light brown, oblong, almost as thick as long
• x = 14 (10, 11)

Nomenclature:

• Teramnus P.Browne
  • Browne: 290 (1756)
  • Harvey: 234 (1862)
  • Verdcourt: 533 (1971)

Distribution & Notes:

• Global : Species ± 8, fairly cosmopolitan in warm regions
• Southern Africa : Species 1: Teramnus labialis (L.f.) Spreng. subsp. labialis , the four northern provinces, Swaziland, KwaZulu-Natal and Eastern Cape near Komga