Aeschynomene rhodesiaca Harms

Perennial herb with prostrate or straggling stems to 15-60 cm long from a woody rootstock; young shoots glabrous or with sparse tubercular-based sticky hairs, soon glabrous. Leaves 8-14-foliolate; leaflets 4-15 x 1-3.5 mm, oblanceolate or oblong-oblanceolate, rounded and mucronulate at the apex, cuneate at the base, glabrous; main nerve ± central; petiole and rhachis together 10-25 mm long; petiolules very short; stipules 8-28 x 1.2-8 mm, ovate, oblong-lanceolate or lanceolate, appendaged obliquely on one side for 1-3 mm, leaf-like, closely veined, ± persistent. Inflorescences axillary, often apparently branched, 3-12 cm long, few-several-flowered, pubescent; peduncle 1-2 cm long, pedicels 3-7 mm long, pubescent with tubercular-based hairs; bracts 3-partite, persistent, each lobe 2-6 x 0.5-1 mm, lanceolate; bracteoles 2-3 x 0.5-1 mm, lanceolate, ciliolate, sometimes deeply 2-partite, persistent. Calyx with a few short tubercular-based hairs save near margins, 2-lipped; lips 4-5 x 2-3 mm, elliptic-oblong, one emarginate, the other 3-fid. Standard orange or yellow, often veined red (and in one instance flowers stated to be pink), 6-10 x 4-6.5 mm, violin-shaped, emarginate, wings and keel yellow or orange, the petals of the latter not laciniate. Fruit of 1-3(4) articles joined by very narrow necks, each article semicircular, one margin straight the other strongly curved, 2.7-3.5 x 2.5-3 mm, compressed, with a few tubercular-based hairs on the faces and margins; stipe c. 3-6 mm long. Seeds chestnut-brown, 2 x 1.5 x 0.7 mm, semicircular-reniform, compressed; hilum round, very small, slightly eccentric.