Description:

• Perennial or annual herbs, or undershrubs
• Leaves 1(3)-foliolate; stipules conspicuous, persistent, glumaceous or scarious, free or connate, erect, acuminate and striate
• Flowers small, pink to purple or orange-apricot, pedicellate, in pairs, arranged in slender, elongate, spike-like pseudoracemes, terminal and leaf-opposed, rarely paniculately branched
• Calyx rigidly glumaceous, with short, campanulate tube; lobes longer than tube, often ciliate, 2 upper often largely connate
• Petals: vexillum sessile or somewhat clawed; wings adnate to keel; keel slightly incurved, obtuse, with membranous appendage on one or both sides
• Stamens diadelphous
• Ovary sessile or shortly stalked, few- to many-ovuled, sometimes glandular-pubescent; style filiform, incurved at apex, with small, capitate stigma
• Pod linear-oblong, subterete or slightly compressed, constricted between seeds; segments often equal-sided; convex or turgid, sometimes hairy
• Seeds suborbicular or globose
• x = 8 (aneuploids)

Nomenclature:

• Alysicarpus Desv.
  • Desvaux: 120 (1813) name conserved
  • Harvey: 230 (1862)
  • Schrire: 17 (1988)

Distribution & Notes:

• Global: Species 25-30, Africa to Asia
• Southern Africa: Species 4, Namibia, Botswana, the four northern provinces to KwaZulu-Natal and Eastern Cape