Description:

• Perennial herbs; shrubs or shrublets; woody rhizomes bearing 1-many virgate, aerial stems
• Leaves pinnately 3-foliolate; leaflets entire, often mucronate, terminal often longer than lateral ones; stipules often small, persistent
• Flowers borne in pairs, each pair subtended by 2 series of bracts, second series usually paired; bracteoles 2, at base of calyx
• Calyx campanulate, persistent in fruit, lobes subequal, upper 2 more connate than the others
• Petals: vexillum clawed; wings falcate-oblong, free or scarcely adherent to keel; keel obtuse or beaked, not laterally appendaged
• Stamens diadelphous; anthers uniform
• Ovary 1-ovulate; style filiform, incurved, persistent in fruit; stigma small, terminal
• Pod ovate or orbicular, reticulate, indehiscent
• Seeds compressed, suborbicular
• x = 9, 10, 11 (polyploidy)

Nomenclature:

• *Lespedeza Michx.
  • Michaux: 70, t. 39 (1803)
  • Hutchinson: 487 (1964)
  • Hilliard & Burtt: 127 (1970)
  • Schrire: 19 (1988)

Distribution & Notes:

• Global: Species ± 40, in temperate North America, east and tropical Asia and Australia
• Southern Africa: Species 1: *Lespedeza cuneata (Dum.Cours.) G.Don, has become naturalised in the midlands of KwaZulu-Natal in the Pietermaritzburg, Kokstad and Ixopo Districts