Description:

• Unarmed small trees, shrubs or suffrutices, often with a greatly enlarged underground rootstock or a number of rootstocks
• Leaves bipinnate; leaflets small, many-jugate, with midrib usually oblique; petioles eglandular
• Flowers bisexual, shortly pedicelled in pedunculate racemes or subspikes
• Calyx campanulate with 5 ovate lobes shorter than tube
• Petals 5, valvate, free almost to base
• Stamens 10, free, shortly exserted; anthers with minute, deciduous glands at apex
• Ovary sessile or shortly stalked, many-ovuled; stigma terminal, small, hollow
• Pod usually large and straight, flattened, somewhat woody, with sutures remaining closed, but long-persisting, rigid valves separating
• Seeds compressed-orbicular

Nomenclature:

• Elephantorrhiza Benth.
  • Bentham: 344 (1842)
  • Harvey: 277 (1862)
  • Phillips: 187 (1922)
  • Burtt Davy: 331 (1932)
  • Brenan: 19 (1959)
  • Brenan & Brummitt: 23 (1970)
  • Ross: 247 (1974)
  • Ross: 138 (1975)

Distribution & Notes:

• Global: Species ± 9, Africa south of the equator
• Southern Africa: Species 8, Namibia, the four northern provinces, Swaziland, KwaZulu-Natal