Description:

• Shrubs, or rarely trees, up to ± 3(-6) m tall, generally stiff in habit
• Leaves digitately 3-foliolate, petiolate, stipulate; leaflets oblanceolate to broadly obovate, entire
• Flowers violet, 2 to more than 50 in terminal racemes or racemose panicles; bracts setaceous, usually caducous
• Calyx brown, membranous, with campanulate tube, intruse at base; upper 2 lobes ± united to ± 1 mm from apices; lower lobes deltoid to narrowly triangular
• Petals: vexillum broadly ovate, reflexed, shortly clawed, with callus on inner side of claw; wings oblong-spatulate, eared at base, with short claw bent at right angle to limb; keel incurved, shorter than vexillum, with rather prominent upper ear, shortly clawed
• Stamens monadelphous; tube closed; anthers unequal, alternately versatile and basifixed
• Ovary subsessile, curved, with few to many ovules, glabrous; style incurved, with small, capitate stigma
• Pod linear, flat or sometimes somewhat inflated, 2-valved, with upper suture thickened
• Seeds 5 or 6, dark, with a whitish, annular, collar-like strophiole
• x = 10 (B-chromosomes)

Nomenclature:

• Hypocalyptus Thunb.
  • Thunberg: 124 (1800)
  • Harvey: 81 (1862)
  • Dahlgren: 102 (1972)

Distribution & Notes:

• Southern Africa: Species 3; Western Cape: from Clanwilliam District to Bredasdorp and Riversdale and eastwards to Eastern Cape: Uitenhage and Port Elizabeth Districts