Description:

• Small trees, shrubs or suffrutices, usually glandular with prominent blackish red glands, especially on calyx
• Leaves digitately (1)3-many-foliolate and 3-5-pinnate, or rarely reduced to scales; leaflets entire; stipules stem-clasping, adnate to petiole
• Flowers axillary, fasciculate, 1-5, each with or without a bract but always subtended by a lobed cupulum which itself is subtended by 2 free bracts; bracteoles 0
• Calyx with campanulate tube and sometimes 2-lipped
• Petals: vexillum orbiculate, clawed, often with inflexed sides, rarely with 2 callosities near base; wings subfalcate, longer than the keel, usually eared, clawed; keel incurved, sometimes eared, clawed, with darker patch at tip
• Stamens diadelphous or occasionally monadelphous; vexillary stamen usually free, arching over ovary chamber
• Ovary distinctly stipitate 1-ovulate, glabrous with a few scattered recurved club-headed glands; style glabrous, often filiform, usually thickened above, with terminal, subcapitate stigma
• Pod usually ovate, indehiscent, included within calyx at maturity
• Seeds black, on short funicle
• x = 10, 11 (aneuploids)

Nomenclature:

• Psoralea L.
  • Linnaeus: 762 (1753)
  • Harvey: 143 (1862)
  • Forbes: 116 (1930)
  • Salter: 45 (1939)

Distribution & Notes:

• Southern Africa: Species ± 20, endemic, mainly restricted to the Western Cape but a few extending as far north as KwaZulu-Natal and Swaziland