Description:

• Perennial herbs suffrutices or shrubs, erect, prostrate, or rarely climbing
• Leaves pinnately (1)3-foliolate, often exstipellate, resinous-dotted on lower surface, rarely above; stipules triangular or lanceolate, free or connate, leaf-opposed
• Flowers pale pink, or yellow, or red and yellow, or red, orange and yellow, in axillary racemes, rarely solitary
• Calyx with campanulate tube oblique at base, hairy, 5-lobed; lobes longer or shorter than tube, subequal, rarely 2 upper shortly connate
• Petals: vexillum variously oblong or obovate, with deeply channelled claw, usually inflexed-eared; wings usually shorter than keel and partially adnate to it, usually eared and clawed; keel slightly incurved at apex, clawed
• Stamens diadelphous, with vexillary filament curved or bulbous-kneed at base
• Ovary sessile or stalked, usually with basal, cupular disc, usually 2-ovuled, villous; style usually slightly thickened above, with capitate stigma
• Pod compressed, 2-valved, broadly oblong to rhomboidal, obliquely beaked, variously clothed with long hairs
• Seeds (1)2, compressed, reniform or oblong; funicle attached to one end of hilum
• x = 11

Nomenclature:

• Eriosema (DC.) G.Don
  • Don: 237 (1832) name conserved
  • Harvey: 258 (1862)
  • Grear: 17 (1970)
  • Verdcourt: 761 (1971)

Distribution & Notes:

• Global: Species ± 130, fairly cosmopolitan in tropical and subtropical regions
• Southern Africa: Species ± 36, widespread