Description:

• Shrublets or shrubs up to ± 2 m tall, prostrate, ascending or erect, sometimes spiny
• Leaves usually fascicled, (1)3-foliolate, variable; leaflets varying from flat to canaliculate or terete, obtuse to mucronate or spine-tipped, with entire margin, glabrous or variously pubescent; stipules 0
• Flowers mostly yellow, often with purplish shades, rarely white, or purple, usually in heads, or racemes, less often (1)2 or 3, axillary or terminal; bracts and bracteoles often foliaceous
• Calyx with campanulate tube; lobes usually subequal, sometimes lowest the longest
• Petals: vexillum usually ovate or rounded, shortly clawed, often pubescent on back; wings oblong, often with transverse ridges, clawed; keel usually planoconvex, gibbous or sometimes saccate, clawed
• Stamens monadelphous; staminal tube split to base; anthers unequal, 5 short and dorsifixed, 4 long and basifixed and one intermediate
• Ovary usually shortly stalked, obliquely ovate or lanceolate, glabrous or pubescent, 2-several-ovuled; style incurved, with minute, terminal, capitate stigma
• Pod usually dehiscent, broadly ovate to lanceolate or rarely linear, turgid or compressed, 1-several-seeded
• Seeds reniform to obliquely ovate, on filiform funicles
• x = 9 (7, 8, 10) (high polyploidy)

Nomenclature:

• Aspalathus L.
  • Linnaeus: 711 (1753)
  • Harvey: 94 (1862)
  • Dahlgren: 7 (1960)
  • Dahlgren: 9 (1961)
  • Dahlgren: 7 (1963a)
  • Dahlgren: 185 (1963b)
  • Dahlgren: 10 (1963c)
  • Dahlgren: 7 (1965)
  • Dahlgren: 7 (1966)
  • Dahlgren: 512 (1969)
  • Dahlgren: 1 (1988)
• Borbonia L.
  • Linneaus: 494 (1738)

Distribution & Notes:

• Southern Africa: Species ± 278, the largest genus of endemic flowering plants, concentrated in the Western Cape but extending into KwaZulu-Natal