Description:

• Shrublets ± woody from a woody rootstock, ericoid, usually villous, rarely branchlets ending in spines
• Leaves simple, sessile, sometimes remote, ovate-lanceolate, concave or flattish, sometimes pungent; stipules 0
• Flowers white to pinkish purple, seldom bright yellow, frequently with darker keel, usually subsessile and clustered in axils of upper leaves, or in small heads, often paired, pedicels 1-bracteolate
• Calyx pubescent or villous, with campanulate tube; lobes subequal or with upper 2 extensively connate
• Petals: vexillum ovate-elliptic or shortly suborbicular, emarginate, shortly and broadly clawed; wings with long claw, sometimes eared at base; keel with pocket on either side, long-clawed
• Stamens monadelphous; staminal tube sometimes split and short or adnate to lower portion of calyx tube; anthers alternately longer and basifixed, and shorter and versatile
• Ovary sessile or shortly stalked, narrowly ovate, often slightly compressed, 1-ovuled, villous; style incurved with terminal stigma
• Pod compressed, obliquely ovate, often beaked, 2-valved, pubescent
• Seeds ± oblong
• x = 9 (1 report)

Nomenclature:

• Coelidium Vogel ex Walp.
  • Walpers: 472 (1839)
  • Harvey: 24 (1862)
  • Granby: 12 (1980)

Distribution & Notes:

• Southern Africa: Species ± 20, SW Western Cape as far north as Nieuwoudtville (Northern Cape, Calvinia District) and as far east as the Outeniqua and Kouga Mountains (Eastern Cape)