Description:

• Evergreen or deciduous trees
• Leaves alternate, imparipinnate, stipulate; leaflets few to many, alternate to subopposite; stipules caducous
• Flowers usually yellow to orange, often large, in lax, axillary or terminal racemes or panicles, bracteate
• Calyx with campanulate tube; lobes 5, shorter than tube, 2 upper lobes ± connate
• Petals: vexillum orbicular or broadly ovate, with broad claw; wings eared, clawed
• Stamens monadelphous, or staminal tube split into 2 bundles, rarely diadelphous; anthers equal, with longitudinal dehiscence
• Ovary sessile or stalked, 2-6-ovuled, sometimes hairy; style almost straight to shortly incurved, with small stigma
• Pod compressed, indehiscent, orbicular or ovate, or sometimes oblong, ± oblique at base, usually with a hardened central seed-bearing part, with membranous wing or sharp ridge, sometimes mainly coriaceous or membranous; style lateral, rarely terminal, glabrous or setose at middle
• Seeds 1-3, reniform or oblong-reniform, smooth
• x = 8, 9, 10, 11 (polyploidy)

Nomenclature:

• Pterocarpus Jacq.
  • Jacquin: 283, t. 183/192 (1763)
  • Harvey: 264 (1862)
  • Polhill: 81 (1971)

Distribution & Notes:

• Global: Species ± 20, pantropical in forests and wooded grassland
• Southern Africa: Species 3, Namibia, Botswana, Northern Province, North-West, Mpumalanga, Swaziland and KwaZulu-Natal