Pterocarpus Jacq.

Evergreen or deciduous trees; slash usually producing a red resinous exudate. Leaves alternate, imparipinnate, with leaflets alternate to sub-opposite, very rarely (and not in East Africa) 1-foliolate; stipules variously developed, frequently caducous; stipels absent; leaflets often covered with minute glands beneath. Flowers in terminal or axillary racemes or panicles; bracts and bracteoles generally small and caducous. Calyx turbinate to campanulate, shortly 5-lobed, with the 2 upper lobes practically connate. Corolla yellow to orange in Africa (elsewhere occasionally whitish and violet); standard generally with a well-developed claw and broadly expanded blade, glabrous or practically so (at least in Africa); wings free, oblong or often with the blade expanded, thus ± obovate or spathulate; keel-petals usually narrow and shorter, lightly coherent on lower side towards the tips. Stamens connate into a sheath open above or above and below, sometimes the vexillary stamen free; anthers dorsifixed with longitudinal dehiscence. Ovary sessile (not in Africa) or stipitate, few-ovulate; style little curved, tapered to small terminal stigma, glabrous at least apically. Fruit compressed, indehiscent, with a variously thickened or hardened central seed-bearing part and a narrow to very broad wing, bearing the style subterminally, laterally or curved right round to the base, 1 (–3)-seeded. Seeds reniform or oblong-reniform, smooth; hilum and rim-aril small.