Description:

• Trees, shrubs, or rarely perennial herbs
• Leaves imparipinnate, pulvinate; leaflets various; stipels setaceous or 0
• Flowers in terminal racemes or leafy panicles; bracts linear, minute or 0
• Calyx with narrowly campanulate tube, shortly toothed, sometimes tomentose
• Petals: vexillum broadly obovate or orbicular, erect or spreading; wings oblong-oblique; keel oblong, suberect, with its petals usually imbricate or cohering along back
• Stamens free or rarely subconnate at base; anthers versatile, sometimes with small, blunt, apical gland
• Ovary shortly stalked, several- to many-ovuled, sometimes densely villous; style somewhat incurved; stigma small, terminal
• Pod moniliform, terete or slightly compressed, fleshy, indehiscent or obscurely 2-valved, often beaked
• Seeds obovoid or globose
• x = 7, 8, 9, 11, 13 (polyploidy)

Nomenclature:

• Sophora L.
  • Linnaeus: 373 (1753)
  • Harvey: 265 (1862)
  • Brummitt & Gillett: 259 (1966)
  • Polhill: 43 (1971)

Distribution & Notes:

• Global: Species ± 50 cosmopolitan in warm regions
• Southern Africa: Species 1: Sophora inhambensis Klotzsch (= S. nitens Benth.), KwaZulu-Natal
  • *S. japonica L. and *S. secundiflora Lag. are grown as street trees or garden ornamentals