| | The genera of Leguminosae-Caesalpinioideae and Swartzieae |
~ Bauhinia.
Type species: A. garipensis (E.Mey.) Torre & Hillc.
Habit and leaf form. Trees, or shrubs (prostrate or erect, without tendrils); unarmed.
The leaves shallowly two-lobed. Stipules absent or early caducous or very inconspicuous in mature leaves, or present, persistent and conspicuous in mature leaves (but then small, sagittate, deciduous); membranous; not connate.
Inflorescence and floral morphology. The inflorescences unbranched; as deduced from subtribal descriptions, simple racemes.
The flowers hermaphrodite; pentamerous; coloured. Floral tube length relative to total hypanthium + calyx length about 0.5–0.6. Hypanthium present; short, campanulate. Calyx 5; not covering the rest of the flower in bud; gamosepalous (to half its length); more or less regular; members not imbricate. Corolla present; slightly irregular; 5; without greatly reduced members; polypetalous. Petals all clawed; imbricate; imbricate-ascending; yellow, or yellow and red. Disk present and conspicuous. The androecium comprising 10 members; members all free of one another; members markedly unequal (the two whorls of different lengths); comprising only fertile stamens. Fertile stamens 10. Anthers attached well above the base of the connective; dehiscing longitudinally. Ovary stipitate; free (the long gynophore free of the hypanthium, confluent with the upper margins of the ovary and fruit). Ovules few to numerous.
Fruit, seed and seedling. Fruit a two-valved pod (tardily dehiscent); curved (semi-lunate); without markedly twisting or enrolling valves; papery, the valves thin, not becoming woody. The mature valves without prominent venation. Seeds non-endospermic; not arillate (the hilum circular); with a straight or slightly oblique radicle.
Pollen ultrastructure. Tectum reticulate.
Cytology. Basic chromosome number, x = 14. 2n = 28.
Species number and distribution. 2 species (A. garipensis and A. pechuelii). Southwestern Africa.
Tribe. Cercideae.
Comments. Providing forage.
Miscellaneous. Illustrations: • Adenolobus garipensis: flower, fruit and seed (Wunderlin & Larsen, 1981).
We advise against extracting comparative information from the descriptions. This is much more easily achieved using the DELTA data files or the interactive key, which allows access to the character list, illustrations, full and partial descriptions, diagnostic descriptions, differences and similarities between taxa, lists of taxa exhibiting or lacking specified attributes, distributions of character states within any set of taxa, geographical distribution, and classification. See also Guidelines for using data taken from Web publications.
Cite this publication as: ‘Watson, L., and Dallwitz, M.J. 1993 onwards. The genera of Leguminosae-Caesalpinioideae and Swartzieae: descriptions, illustrations, identification, and information retrieval. In English and French. Version: 4th August 2019. delta-intkey.com’.
