Description:

• Shrublets or perennial herbs, prostrate, climbing or erect
• Leaves pinnately 3-foliolate, stipulate
• Flowers few, conspicuous, in congested heads on long peduncles, with or without bracts; bracteoles 2
• Calyx glabrous, with campanulate tube; lobes 5, ovate, obtuse, shorter than tube
• Petals: vexillum rounded, with 2 inflexed auricles, with margins sometimes reflexed, subsessile or with short, deeply channelled claw; wings eared, with linear, sometimes short, claw; keel incurved, ± concave-convex, obtuse, sometimes gibbous, subsessile or with short claw
• Stamens diadelphous, with vexillary stamen sometimes adnate with others at base
• Ovary sessile, linear, many-ovuled, surrounded by cupular disc at base; style scarcely thickened above, sometimes articulated on ovary, with flat, oblique, ciliated stigma
• Pod linear, compressed, 2-valved, septate between seeds; valves convex
• Seeds black, oblong, thick, minutely papillose
• x = 12 (aneuploids)

Nomenclature:

• Sphenostylis E.Mey.
  • Meyer: 148 (1836)
  • Harvey: 239 (1862)
  • Burtt Davy: 418 (1932)
  • Dyer: t. 1010 (1947)
  • Verdoorn: t. 1521 (1969)
  • Verdcourt: 388 (1970)

Distribution & Notes:

• Global: Species 7 or 8, Africa and India
• Southern Africa: Species 2: Sphenostylis angustifolia Sond. and S. marginata E.Mey. subsp. marginata, the four northern provinces, Swaziland, Free State and KwaZulu-Natal