Description:

• Small trees or shrubs, not climbing, armed with spines or unarmed, eglandular
• Leaves at first pinnate, later bipinnate, with common petiole sometimes flattened, often ending in a spine; leaflets opposite or partly alternate, small or obsolete; stipules often short, spinescent
• Inflorescences in axillary racemes which are sometimes corymbose and short
• Flowers bisexual, irregular
• Calyx with campanulate or basin-shaped tube and 5 lobes ± imbricate
• Petals 5, spreading, sometimes unequal, and claw of longest with appendage
• Stamens 10, rarely fewer, free; filaments alternately longer and shorter, often flattened, villous at least at base; anthers elliptic
• Ovary free, shortly stalked, many-ovuled; style glabrous or clothed below, with terminal and hollow or slightly oblique stigma
• Pod linear to ± elliptic, nearly straight or twisted, sub-2-valved, sometimes constricted between seeds
• Seeds oblong, hard, compressed
• x = 7, 9

Nomenclature:

• Parkinsonia L.
  • Linnaeus: 375 (1753)
  • Harvey: 269 (1862)
  • Hutchinson: 264 (1964)
  • Ross: 109 (1977)
  • Schreiber: 16 (1967)
  • Brenan: 43 (1967)

Distribution & Notes:

• Global: Species ± 14, restricted mainly to warm parts of America
• Southern Africa: Species 1: Parkinsonia africana Sond., Namibia and Northern Cape