Description:

• Herbs or undershrubs, often glandular, sometimes shortly spinescent, sometimes with tuberous roots
• Leaves bipinnate, imparipinnate; leaflets usually small; stipules small, usually deciduous; stipellae, when present, small and setaceous
• Inflorescence a terminal or leaf-opposed raceme; bracts small, deciduous; bracteoles 0
• Flowers bisexual, irregular, pedicellate
• Calyx with shortly campanulate tube and 5 subequal lobes longer than tube, imbricate or valvate, often with black glands
• Petals 5, subequal, imbricate
• Stamens 10, free; filaments somewhat declinate, often glandular at base, sometimes villous
• Ovary subsessile, few- to many-ovuled; style often clavate, with terminal, usually small, concave or hollow stigma
• Pod subsessile, linear, oblong or ovate, straight or falcate, longitudinally dehiscent, compressed, 2-valved, glandular or setose
• Seeds compressed, transversely or obliquely ovate
• x = 12

Nomenclature:

• Hoffmannseggia Cav.
  • Cavanilles: tt. 392, 393 (1797)
  • Harvey: 269 (1862)
  • Brenan: 198, 202 (1963)
  • Hutchinson: 261 (1964)
  • Brummitt & Ross: 415 (1974)
  • Ross: 117 (1977)

Distribution & Notes:

• Global: Species ± 30, Central America and Africa
• Southern Africa: Species 3, widespread except in Mpumalanga, Swaziland, Free State, Lesotho and Western Cape