Description:

• Rigid, much-branched shrubs armed with sharp, straight, axillary spines
• Leaves simple, usually small, entire; stipules minute, free
• Flowers solitary or often few in axillary racemes, pink, red or purple; bracts very small; bracteoles none
• Calyx campanulate, with 5 short, subequal teeth
• Petals: vexillum obovate, shortly clawed; wings falcate-oblong, free; keel incurved, obtuse
• Stamens diadelphous; vexillary stamen free, remainder connate; anthers uniform
• Ovary subsessile, many-ovuled; style filiform, incurved, glabrous; stigma small, terminal
• Pod linear, thick or subterete, smooth, indehiscent, strongly contracted between the seeds
• Seeds 1-5, reniform
• x = 8

Nomenclature:

• *Alhagi Gagnebin
  • Gagnebin: 59 (1755)
  • Adanson: 328 & 514 (1763)
  • Harvey: 233 (1862)
  • Hutchinson: 469 (1964)
  • Henderson & Anderson: 174 (1966)
  • Ball: 191 (1968)

Distribution & Notes:

• Global: Species 3, in dry or maritime places from Mediterranean regions to Nepal
• Southern Africa: Species 1: *Alhagi maurorum Medik. (= *A. camelorum Fisch.), has become naturalised in the Douglas area (Northern Cape) and in parts of the Oudtshoorn District of the Western Cape