Description:

• Shrubs or small trees, with abbreviated lateral shoots often terminating in spines
• Leaves bipinnate, often with small, many-jugate leaflets; rachis glandular at intersection of some at least of the pinnae
• Flowers sessile, in cylindric spikes on solitary or clustered, often drooping peduncles, upper bisexual, yellow, lower neuter, rosy or purple
• Calyx campanulate, shortly 5-toothed or nearly truncate
• Corolla campanulate; lobes 5, valvate, oblong, shorter than tube
• Stamens 10, in bisexual flowers, shortly exserted; anthers with stalked glands
• Ovary subsessile, compressed, villous, several-ovuled; style elongate, with terminal, truncate stigma
• Pod linear, compressed, contorted, coriaceous, indehiscent or irregularly dehiscent along the sutures
• Seeds compressed, ovoid to ellipsoid, smooth
• x = 14 (can also be 7) (polyploidy)

Nomenclature:

• Dichrostachys (A.DC.) Wight & Arn.
  • Wight & Arnott: 271 (1834) name conserved
  • Harvey: 278 (1862)
  • Brenan: 36 (1959)
  • Brenan & Brummitt: 37 (1970)
  • Ross: 123 (1975)

Distribution & Notes:

• Global: Species ± 20, from Africa to Asia and Australia
• Southern Africa: Species 1, in warmer parts of Namibia, the four northern provinces, Swaziland and KwaZulu-Natal