Description:

• Small trees with crown narrow or spreading
• Leaves very variable, imparipinnate; leaflets with (2-)6-12(-23) pairs of pinnae, subsessile, linear, linear-lanceolate, lanceolate, elliptic or narrowly ovate, with a short, apical mucro; stipules linear, acuminate
• Flowers pink to rose-violet, violet-purple or rarely white, in axillary and subterminal racemes; bracts small, caducous
• Calyx 2-lipped, tomentose; tube basin-shaped, somewhat compressed laterally, introrse at base; upper lip 2-toothed; lower lip 3-toothed, both longer than tube
• Petals: vexillum suborbicular or obovate, strongly reflexed; wings falcate, clawed; keel somewhat shorter than wings, incurved, beaked, with 2 petals clawed
• Stamens 10, free; filaments linear, narrowing upwards, villous; anthers small, versatile
• Ovary shortly stalked, 5-8-ovuled, densely villous; style curved, narrowing into small, terminal stigma with a few hairs
• Pod dehiscent, sometimes only along upper suture, coriaceous or sometimes woody, linear to linear-oblong, 2-valved
• Seeds elliptic in outline, yellow-brown, dark brown or black
• x = 6 or 9 (1 report, polyploidy)

Nomenclature:

• Virgilia Poir.
  • Poiret: 677 (1808) name conserved
  • Harvey: 266 (1862)
  • Salter: 58 (1939)
  • Van Wyk: 348 (1986).

Distribution & Notes:

• Southern Africa: Species 2, limited to moist sites along the Cape coastal region of South Africa, from the Cape Peninsula (Western Cape) to Port Elizabeth (Eastern Cape)