Description:

• Perennial or annual herbs, undershrubs, or shrubs, mostly covered by biramous hairs
• Leaves (1)3(5-9)-foliolate, pinnate, simple or reduced to scales; leaflets opposite or less often alternate, entire; stipules setaceous to foliaceous; stipels often present
• Flowers in axillary or terminal racemes or spikes, sometimes on long peduncles; bracts persistent or caducous
• Calyx usually with shallowly campanulate tube; lobes equal or subequal
• Petals: vexillum usually sessile, mostly hairy on dorsal surface; wings rarely markedly clawed, often eared, sometimes gibbous; keel with short, broad claw, spurred laterally or sometimes saccate, upper margin with a prominent fringe of hairs
• Stamens diadelphous; vexillary stamen free; anthers uniform, apiculate
• Ovary usually sessile, usually linear, with 1-many ovules; style usually bent at right angle, with capitate stigma
• Pod variable, globose to linear, straight to coiled, septate within, variously hairy or glabrous
• Seeds globose to cylindrical; either truncate, compressed, obloid, ellipsoid or quadrate; with hard, bony testa and a small, oval hilum; a rudimentary rim-aril is present in most taxa
• x = 8 (7) (aneuploids, polyploidy, B-chromosomes)

Nomenclature:

• Indigofera L.
  • Linnaeus: 487 (1738)
  • Linnaeus: 751 (1753)
  • Harvey: 163 (1862)
  • Phillips: 412 (1951)
  • Gillett: 5 (1958)
  • Hutchinson: 400 (1964)

Distribution & Notes:

• Global: Species ± 730, cosmopolitan in tropical and subtropical regions
• Southern Africa: Species over 210, widespread