Description:

• Shrubs, or trees, or suffrutices with enlarged subterranean rootstocks; usually armed with prickles; variously hirsute
• Leaves pinnately 3-foliolate, deciduous; leaflets with a pair of glands at base, stipulate
• Flowers usually in terminal or sometimes axillary racemes, showy, appearing before or with leaves, bracteate; bracts usually hairy, deciduous
• Calyx with narrow to campanulate tube, 2-lipped or subtruncate, sometimes with tube cleft nearly to base, sometimes woolly-villous to puberulous
• Petals: vexillum conduplicate-falcate, shortly clawed, sometimes minutely velvety; wings frequently curved, shortly clawed, sometimes eared at base; keel sometimes eared
• Stamens monadelphous or diadelphous, but vexillary stamen united to staminal tube for varying lengths; anthers uniform
• Ovary stalked, linear, many-ovuled, usually densely tomentose; style terete, incurved, sometimes hispid below; stigma small, terminal
• Pod usually falcate, moniliform, compressed or subterete, constricted, armed with prickles
• Seeds red or brown, elliptic, smooth
• x = 21 (aneuploids, high polyploidy)

Nomenclature:

• Erythrina L.
  • Linnaeus: 706 (1753)
  • Harvey: 236 (1862)
  • Collett: 219 (1941)
  • Codd: 507 (1955)
  • Hennessy: 1 (1972)
  • Hennessy: 2 (1991)

Distribution & Notes:

• Global: Species ± 100, fairly cosmopolitan in warm regions
• Southern Africa: Species 9, widespread, but not extending into central Northern or Western Cape