Description:

• Trees tall, unarmed, with hard wood
• Leaves bipinnate, with 1 pair of large pinnae or with more pairs and smaller pinnae; petiolar gland elevated or obscure; stipules small, linear, deciduous
• Flowers mostly bisexual, small, sessile, in capitate clusters on solitary, axillary peduncles, or subfasciculate, or racemose at the top of branches, pale green
• Calyx tubular-campanulate, 5-dentate
• Petals 5, slightly coherent at base, ± pubescent or puberulous outside
• Stamens 10, free, exserted; anthers ovate, with many pollen grains, glandular at apex
• Ovary sessile, many-ovuled, pubescent; style filiform, with small, terminal stigma
• Pod broadly falcate, compressed, thick and woody, 2-valved, with valves elastically recurved from apex, septate within between seeds
• Seeds transverse, obovate, compressed, with short, fleshy funicle
• x = 12

Nomenclature:

• Xylia Benth.
  • Bentham: 417 (1842)
  • Brenan: 359 (1957)
  • Brenan: 29 (1959)
  • Brenan & Brummitt: 33 (1970)
  • Ross: 136 (1975)

Distribution & Notes:

• Global: Species ± 12, tropical Asia to Africa
• Southern Africa: Species 1: Xylia torreana Brenan, rare in the Pafuri region of the Kruger National Park (Northern Province)