Description:

• Woody lianes or perennial herbs, prostrate or twining
• Leaves pinnately 3-foliolate; stipules small, caducous
• Flowers showy, white to purple, usually clustered along a peduncle in axillary racemes
• Calyx with campanulate tube, 5-lobed; lobes 2-lipped; upper lip large, truncate or 2-fid; lower smaller, subentire or 3-fid
• Petals: vexillum large, obovate, reflexed, eared at base, clawed, with 2 callosities or ridges above claw; wings falcate or subtwisted, eared, with callosity on ear, clawed; keel broader than wings, incurved, obtuse or obtusely beaked, with beak usually inflexed or spiral, sometimes eared, gibbous, clawed
• Stamens monadelphous or imperfectly diadelphous; anthers uniform
• Ovary subsessile, many-ovuled, often surrounded at base by cupular disc, sometimes hairy, style incurved or folded with keel; stigma terminal, sometimes subcapitate
• Pod large, oblong, compressed or turgid, dehiscent, 2-valved, often with 2 ridges on sutures, sometimes velvety
• Seeds black, white or reddish, often elliptic
• x = 11 (aneuploids, polyploidy)

Nomenclature:

• Canavalia DC.
  • Candolle: 325 (1825) name conserved
  • Harvey: 238 (1862)
  • Sauer: 106 (1964)
  • Verdcourt: 571 (1971)

Distribution & Notes:

• Global: Species ± 50, cosmopolitan in warm regions
• Southern Africa: Species 6, Namibia, North-West, Northern Province, Mpumalanga, Swaziland, KwaZulu-Natal and Eastern Cape near East London