Description:

• Annual, perennial suffrutescent herbs or small shrubs
• Leaves alternate or rarely opposite, usually petiolate, digitately 3(4-8)-foliolate, rarely simple or 1-foliolate; stipules small or foliaceous, usually single at each node, less commonly paired or 0
• Flowers usually yellow (often partly orange, pink or white) or blue, rarely pink, pale purple, violet or white, axillary or terminal, usually solitary, sometimes 2- or 3-nate, or in heads, or sometimes head-like racemes, often pedunculate, usually bracteate
• Calyx with campanulate tube, occasionally somewhat inflated; 4 upper lobes substantially united, lowest narrower than others, rarely lobes subequal
• Petals: vexillum ovate to oblong with short or long claw, sometimes with 2 cushions at upper end of claw, glabrous or hairy outside; wings sometimes shorter than keel, clawed, eared at base; keel clawed, eared at base, usually gibbous
• Stamens monadelphous, unequal, usually with tube split to base, open along upper (vexillar) side, rarely much united; anthers usually unequal, 4 oblong to linear and basifixed, 5 ovate and dorsifixed, carinal one intermediate
• Ovary sessile or shortly stalked, few- to many-ovuled; style curved up and tapering, occasionally hairy towards base, with minutely capitate stigma
• Pod subsessile or rarely long-stipitate, flat or turgid, linear to oblong or ovate
• Seeds on long funicle, suborbicular to obliquely cordiform
• x = 9, 14 (polyploidy)

Nomenclature:

• Lotononis (DC.) Eckl. & Zeyh.
  • Ecklon & Zeyher: 176 (1836) name conserved
  • Harvey: 47 (1862)
  • Dümmer: 275 (1913)
  • Dahlgren: 371 (1964)
  • Van Wyk: 92 (1991)
• Buchenroedera Eckl. & Zeyh.
  • Ecklon & Zeyher: 194 (1836)

Distribution & Notes:

• Global: Species ± 150, Africa, with few extending to east tropical Africa, the Mediterranean and Pakistan
• Southern Africa: Species 144, widespread