Description:

• Erect or scrambling shrubs, lianes or small to large trees
• Leaves alternate, unifoliolate, pulvinate, usually large; stipules caducous
• Flowers in lax, axillary and terminal racemes or pseudoracemes, sometimes panicled or fascicled in leaf axils; bracts smaller below, upper larger, deciduous, sometimes shorter than calyx
• Calyx splitting into 2 reflexed lobes or down one line, retuse at base; lobes entire or 2-toothed
• Petals subsessile or clawed; vexillum orbicular; wings oblong or obovate, white with yellow or orange blotch at base, sometimes cream-coloured, purplish pink or pinkish red; keel slightly incurved, obtuse
• Stamens 10, free; filaments linear; anthers uniform, basifixed
• Ovary sessile or subsessile, 2-8-ovuled; style incurved with small terminal stigma
• Pod linear-oblong to oblanceolate, sometimes falcate, usually acuminate, flattened, 2-valved, woody, brown or purplish black
• Seeds 1-5, lenticular
• x = 11 (polyploidy)

Nomenclature:

• Baphia Afzel. ex Lodd.
  • Loddiges: t. 367 (1825)
  • Lester-Garland: 221 (1921)
  • Brummitt: 157 (1965)
  • Brummitt: 49 (1971)
  • Soladoye: 302 (1985)

Distribution & Notes:

• Global: Species ± 80, Africa and Madagascar
• Southern Africa: Species 2, Namibia, Botswana, the four northern provinces and KwaZulu-Natal