Description:

• Trees, shrubs, sometimes climbers or lianes, or rarely herbs, unarmed or often armed
• Leaves nearly always alternate, pinnate or bipinnate; with pinnae or leaflets in 1-many pairs, rarely leaves simple or 1-foliolate, sometimes gland-dotted; stipules paired, mostly caducous; stipels occasionally present and minute
• Flowers irregular, rarely regular, usually 5-merous, mostly bisexual, some large and showy, others small, in axillary, terminal, or rarely leaf-opposed racemes, panicles or spikes
• Sepals 5 or 4 by fusion of 2, free or partly united, imbricate or rarely valvate, often much reduced when the bracteoles are large and calyx-like and covering the bud
• Petals 5 or fewer, rarely 0, the adaxial innermost, others variously imbricate
• Stamens 10 or fewer, rarely many, free or variously connate; anthers various, usually dehiscing lengthwise, rarely by terminal pores, 2-locular; extra-staminal disc sometimes present
• Ovary free or, when stalked, the stalk sometimes ± adnate to the calyx tube, of 1 carpel, 1-locular, with a ventral suture; style simple; ovules 1-many, superposed
• Pod 2-valved, or indehiscent and drupaceous or samaroid
• Seeds sometimes arillate, rarely with endosperm; cotyledons fleshy or foliaceous; radicle straight or rarely slightly oblique

Nomenclature:

• CCCCCC

Distribution & Notes:

• Southern Africa: Genera 27

References:

• None - see family data page

Resources:

• Key to Fabaceae Subfamilies
• Key to Caesalpinioideae Genera

• Caesalpinioideae Genera: