Description:

• Shrubs, suffrutices or rarely decumbent herbs
• Leaves 3-foliolate; petiolate; leaflets oblanceolate, obovate, cuneate, entire, acute or obtuse, recurved mucronate, nigro-punctate or pellucid-dotted; stipules striate, ovate, acute or subulate-acuminate, pubescent, free or adnate to base of petiole
• Flowers white, yellow or pale blue, sessile or subsessile, aggregated in 1 or 5-18 triplets, or rarely doublets, axillary or terminal fascicles, imperfect racemes or lax pseudo-spikes; each flower bracteate; triplets subtended by a single, ovate bract; cupulum 0
• Calyx campanulate, unequally 5-lobed; lowest lobe much longer and broader than the rest; upper lobes variously connate, very rarely stubby black-haired on inside
• Petals: vexillum ovate-oblong, claw and auricles weakly developed, without appendages; wing petals much longer than keel; sculpturing lamellate; keel long-clawed, purple-tipped, obtuse
• Stamens diadelphous; vexillary stamen usually free; anthers uniform, alternately basifixed and medifixed
• Ovary sessile, 1-ovulate, glabrous and glandular, or hairy; style swollen; stigma capitate, penicillate or glabrous
• Pod swollen, indehiscent, slightly beaked, pubescent, protruding from calyx at maturity
• Seeds black, longer than broad

Nomenclature:

• Otholobium C.H.Stirt.
  • Stirton: 341 (1981)
  • Stirton: 1 (1986)

Distribution & Notes:

• Global: Species over 40, mainly restricted to SE and E Africa
• Southern Africa: Extending into the winter-rainfall region of South Africa