Description:

• Annual or perennial herbs or undershrubs, rarely shrubs
• Leaves imparipinnate or digitately (1)3-5-foliolate or pinnately 3-foliolate; leaflets entire, usually narrowed at base and widest above middle; stipules usually setaceous, sometimes broad and striate
• Flowers in racemes, axillary, opposite leaves, or terminal, sometimes on long peduncles; bracts subulate, ovate, or spatulate
• Calyx with campanulate tube, somewhat 2-lipped; often 2 upper lobes connate and lowest the longest
• Petals: vexillum usually with short, broad claw, sometimes with 2 callosities above claw, ± velvety-pubescent on outside; wings obliquely oblong or obovate, slightly adnate to keel, sometimes eared, clawed; keel incurved
• Stamens monadelphous or diadelphous; anthers uniform
• Ovary sessile, usually linear, rarely subglobose, (1 or 2)several- to many-ovuled, usually hairy; style incurved or inflexed, often linear, compressed, often bearded, with terminal, capitate stigma
• Pod linear or rarely ovate, compressed, 2-valved, sometimes septate within
• Seeds oblong or subreniform, sometimes with a small strophiole; funicle short; aril almost absent, small or well developed
• x = 11 (8, 12, 13) (polyploidy, B-chromosomes)

Nomenclature:

• Tephrosia Pers.
  • Persoon: 328 (1807) name conserved
  • Harvey: 203 (1862)
  • Forbes: 951 (1948)
  • Gillett: 111 (1958)
  • Brummitt: 219 (1968)

Distribution & Notes:

• Global: Species over 400, mainly in warm regions, abundant in Africa and Australia
• Southern Africa: Species ± 53, widespread