Description:

• Trees, shrubs, or rarely herbs, often armed with prickles or spines
• Leaves bipinnate or rarely once-pinnate; stipules present, sometimes spinescent
• Flowers regular, bisexual, unisexual, or some neuter and sterile, small and short or sometimes elongated and tubular, (3)5(6)-merous, usually sessile in cylindric spikes or globose heads, rarely racemose or in globose umbels; bracts small, often caducous; bracteoles rarely present
• Sepals imbricate or valvate, connate into a toothed or lobed limb, rarely free
• Petals valvate, free or connate into a lobed corolla, hypogynous or slightly perigynous
• Disc usually 0
• Stamens 4-10 (as many as or twice as many as petals), free or monadelphous or adnate to base of corolla tube; anthers small, versatile, often crowned by a deciduous gland, dehiscing lengthwise
• Ovary free at base of calyx tube, 1-locular; style usually filiform; stigma small, terminal; ovules mostly many
• Pod dehiscent or indehiscent, sometimes breaking into 1-seeded segments
• Seeds mostly ovate or orbicular, compressed, sometimes winged, hilum basal, rarely thick, globose or ovoid; aril rarely present, testa hard, endosperm none or thin; cotyledons flat; radicle straight

Nomenclature:

• CCCCCC

Distribution & Notes:

• Southern Africa: Genera 18

References:

• None - see family data page

Resources:

• Key to Fabaceae Subfamilies
• Key to Mimosoideae Genera

• Mimosoideae Genera: