Trees or shrubs of varying size, rarely subshrubs, spiny or rarely unarmed
Leaves bipinnate, with few pairs of opposite pinnae; petiole with circular, sessile, apical gland and sometimes smaller, similar ones on rachis of pinnae; leaflets small, many, mostly opposite, linear, oblong, fusiform
Inflorescence spike-like, axillary, sometimes with globose heads
Flowers bisexual, small
Calyx campanulate, 5-merous
Corolla with 5 linear petals, these fused or ± free, glabrous or pubescent, frequently villous or pilose inside towards tip
Stamens 5 + 5, free; anthers elliptic, dorsifixed, introrse, with an apical, pedicellate, globose or ovoid connectival gland
Pods linear, straight, falcate, annular to spirally coiled
Seeds ovoid, compressed, hard, brown
x = 13, 14 (high polyploidy)
Nomenclature:
*Prosopis L.
Linnaeus: 10 (1767)
Hutchinson: 289 (1964)
Burkart: 219 (1976)
Distribution & Notes:
Global: Species ± 44, SW Asia, Africa, and predominantly America
Southern Africa: *Prosopis chilensis (Molina) Stuntz (Mesquite) and 3 other species have been introduced and have become naturalised
References:
BURKART, A. 1976. A monograph of the genus Prosopis (Leguminosae subfamily Mimosoideae). Journal of the Arnold Arboretum 57
HUTCHINSON, J. 1964. Order LEGUMINALES. The genera of flowering plants 1. Oxford University Press, Oxford
LINNAEUS, C. 1767. Mantissa plantarum 1. Laurentius Salvius, Stockholm
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Welcome to Biodiversity Advisor 2.0!
Biodiversity Advisor, developed by the South African National Biodiversity Institute (SANBI) and its Data Partners, is a system that will provide integrated biodiversity information to a wide range of users who will have access to geospatial data, plant and animal species distribution data, ecosystem-level data, literature, images and metadata.
The integrated information comes from our much-loved Botanical Database of Southern Africa (BODATSA) also known as Plants of Southern Africa (POSA), Zoological Database of Southern Africa (ZODATSA), Biodiversity Geographic Information System (BGIS), SANBI's institutional repository (Opus) and others.
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