e-Key v3 - Pterolobium
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Interactive keys to the identification of seed plants of southern Africa using keys based on plant morphology.

Fabaceae - Caesalpinioideae - Caesalpinieae - Pterolobium R.Br. ex Wight & Arn.

Description :

  • Trees or scandent shrubs, armed with recurved prickles on stems and leaves
  • Leaves bipinnate; leaflets opposite, many, small; stipules small or obsolete
  • Inflorescences of terminal and axillary, often paniculately aggregated, racemes; bracts small, soon deciduous
  • Flowers bisexual, irregular
  • Calyx with shallow, basin-shaped tube and 5 imbricate lobes longer than tube
  • Petals 5, imbricate, sometimes slightly unequal
  • Stamens 10, sometimes unequal, longer than petals, usually villous at base; anthers ± quadrate
  • Ovary free, very shortly stipitate, 1-ovuled; style short or elongated and clavate, with truncate or concave, terminal stigma
  • Pod red, sessile, compressed and samaroid, indehiscent, seed-bearing base obliquely ovate or elliptic, upper part produced into an oblique-oblong or falcate, membranous wing
  • Seeds pendulous, compressed, without endosperm

Nomenclature:

  • Pterolobium R.Br. ex Wight & Arn.
    • Wight & Arnott: 283 (1834) name conserved
    • Salt: 64 (1814) name only
    • Hutchinson: 261 (1964)
    • Brenan: 40 (1967)
    • Ross: 114 (1977)

Distribution & Notes:

  • Global : Species ± 10, cosmopolitan in tropical regions
  • Southern Africa : Species 1: Pterolobium stellatum (Forssk.) Brenan, Northern Province and Mpumalanga

References:

  • BRENAN, J.P.M. 1967. Flora of tropical East Africa . Leguminosae (part 2). Caesalpinioideae
  • HUTCHINSON, J. 1964. Order LEGUMINALES. The genera of flowering plants 1. Oxford University Press, Oxford
  • ROSS, J.H. 1977. Fabaceae . Caesalpinioideae . Flora of southern Africa 16,2
  • SALT, H. 1814. A voyage to Abyssinia, Appendix . Rivington, London
  • WIGHT, R. & ARNOTT, G.A.W. 1834. Prodromus florae peninsula Indiae orientalis 1. Parbury, Allen & Co., London