Description:

• Erect or prostrate herbs, mainly perennial
• Leaves digitately 2-4-foliolate; leaflets often pellucid-dotted; stipules subfoliaceous
• Flowers yellow or orange-yellow, solitary or in interrupted spikes; spikes pedunculate, axillary or terminal; bracts enclosing flowers
• Calyx membranous, 2 upper lobes connate, 2 lateral small, lowest subequal to upper lip
• Petals: vexillum clawed; wings clawed; keel incurved, subrostrate, clawed
• Stamens monadelphous, united into a column below, which at maturity is circumscissile and upper part is shed with petals, lower tubular part remaining to protect ovary; anthers unequal, 5 larger subbasifixed, 5 smaller versatile
• Ovary sessile; several- to many-ovuled; style filiform, with small, terminal stigma
• Pod sessile, compressed, with upper suture nearly straight, lower deeply sinuate, 2-15-jointed, breaking into smooth or spiny, indehiscent segments
• Seeds ovoid, mostly black or dark brown, without appendages
• x = 10, 11

Nomenclature:

• Zornia J.F.Gmel.
  • Gmelin: 1076, 1096 (1791)
  • Harvey: 225 (1862)
  • Mohlenbrock: 1 (1961)
  • Verdcourt: 497 (1973)

Distribution & Notes:

• Global: Species ± 80, mainly Brazil
• Southern Africa: Species 4, widespread from northern borders to the Northern and Eastern Cape