Description:

• Herbs or undershrubs, twining, prostrate or rarely erect, sometimes with woody rootstock
• Leaves usually pinnately 3-foliolate, sometimes digitately (1)3-foliolate, or pinnate, or bipinnate
• leaflets usually with very conspicuous resinous gland-dots beneath, stipulate
• Flowers frequently yellow, lined with brownish purple, in racemes, axillary umbels, dense subsessile clusters, or solitary; bracts caducous
• Calyx usually hairy, with short, campanulate tube, 5-lobed; lobes usually longer than tube; 2 upper connate, often more so than others
• Petals: vexillum usually eared at base, with short channelled claw; wings ± oblong, eared, with straight or curved claw; keel usually gibbous, sometimes saccate, clawed
• Stamens diadelphous, with vexillary filament often kneed; anthers uniform
• Ovary subsessile, linear, lanceolate or ovate, frequently with basal, cupular disc, sometimes glandular, usually with (1)2 ovules; style linear, subterete, or filiform, usually hairy on lower portion, curved and thickened in upper portion and with terminal, capitate stigma
• Pod almost circular to narrowly oblong, compressed, often falcate, frequently glandular and velvety
• Seeds black or brown, rarely dark blue
• x = 11 (aneuploids)

Nomenclature:

• Rhynchosia Lour.
  • Loureiro: 400 (1790)
  • Harvey: 247 (1862)
  • Baker: 113 (1921)
  • Meikle: 537 (1972) name resubmitted for conservation
• Chrysoscias E.Mey.
  • Meyer: 139 (1836)

Distribution & Notes:

• Global: Species ± 200, cosmopolitan throughout the tropics and subtropics
• Southern Africa: Species ± 70, widespread