Description:

• Small, erect, much-branched shrubs up to 1.5 m tall
• Leaves digitately 3-foliolate, shortly petiolate; stipules involucrate, adnate to petiole, completely sheathing twigs and clasping the stem
• Flowers pale to deep golden-yellow, 1 or 2(-4), terminal on short shoots; bracts small, linear-lanceolate; ebracteolate
• Calyx shorter than corolla, 2-lipped; upper lobes separate or somewhat united, triangular; lower lip formed from fusion of lateral and carinal lobes into a lip with 3 short teeth, fusion of lobes higher than vexillar lobes
• Petals: vexillum broadly ovate, apex rounded or emarginate, claw less than half as long as blade; wing petals and keel petals ± equally long, both slightly pocketed, sculpturing upper basal and upper central or upper basal left central, intercostal, lunulate, becoming diffuse in patches or lunulate-lamellate
• Stamens monadelphous; staminal tube split adaxially, consisting of 5 linear-oblong, basifixed anthers alternating with 5 ovate dorsifixed anthers
• Ovary sessile or subsessile, compressed, densely hairy, 7-10-ovuled; style curving gently upwards to a small capitate stigma
• Pod chartaceous, subsessile, narrowly oblong, sometimes slightly curved, plicate or flattened and impressed between seeds, indehiscent
• Seeds dull, khaki to dark brown
• x = 8 (1 report, polyploidy)

Nomenclature:

• Polhillia C.H.Stirt.
  • Stirton: 167 (1985)
  • Van Wyk: 42 (1992)

Distribution & Notes:

• Southern Africa: Species ± 7, endemic to the Western Cape