Description:

• Trees or rarely strong, woody climbers
• Leaves imparipinnate, occasionally pinnately 3-foliolate
• Flowers in racemes or panicles or sometimes fascicled, or 2-nate, bracteate; bracteoles small, usually caducous
• Calyx sometimes villous, with campanulate tube; lobes 5, shorter than tube with 2 upper lobes connate almost to tips
• Petals: vexillum ovate, obovate or suborbicular, cuneately clawed, sometimes with 2 appendages above claw, often silky; wings oblique or falcate, clawed, eared, slightly adnate to keel above claw; keel suberect or curved, obtuse, eared, clawed, sometimes gibbous
• Stamens monadelphous, with vexillary stamen free at base and connate above, rarely entirely free; anthers uniform
• Ovary ± stalked, 2-many-ovuled, frequently hairy; style incurved, with small, terminal, capitate stigma
• Pod oblong or linear-oblong, flat, membranous or leathery, indehiscent, with terminal style scar; sutures not winged, sometimes upper laterally dilated
• Seeds 1 or 2, rarely many, compressed, reniform or suborbicular
• x = 11 (polyploidy)

Nomenclature:

• Lonchocarpus Kunth
  • Kunth: 383 (1823) name conserved
  • Harvey: 263 (1862)
  • Mendonça & Sousa: 831 (1965)
  • Polhill: 65 (1971)

Distribution & Notes:

• Global: Species ± 100, in tropical America and Africa
• Southern Africa: Species 3, Namibia, Botswana, the four northern provinces to KwaZulu-Natal