Fabaceae

Microcharis Benth.

First published in Trans. Linn. Soc. London 25: 297 (1865)
This genus is accepted
The native range of this genus is Africa to Arabian Peninsula.

Descriptions

M. Thulin et al. Flora of Somalia, Vol. 1-4 [updated 2008] https://plants.jstor.org/collection/FLOS

Morphology General Habit
Herbs or shrublets with biramous hairs
Morphology Leaves
Leaves 1–9(–13)-foliolate or simple
Morphology Reproductive morphology Inflorescences
Flowers in axillary racemes; bracts persistent
Morphology Reproductive morphology Flowers Pedicel
Pedicels long and usually standing at right-angles to the axis of the raceme in fruit
Morphology Reproductive morphology Flowers Corolla
Corolla pink or red, soon falling; standard glabrous; keel with lateral pouches but no spurs, sometimes beaked at the tip
Morphology Reproductive morphology Flowers Androecium Stamens Filaments
Vexillary stamen free, usually sterile; anthers with hyaline scales, apiculate
Morphology Reproductive morphology Flowers Gynoecium Stigma
Stigma oblique, discoid
Morphology Reproductive morphology Fruits
Pod linear, straight or curved, flattened, several- to many-seeded.
Distribution
Some 35 species in Africa, Madagascar and Arabia.
Note
Previously usually treated as a subgenus of Indigofera.
[FSOM]

Legumes of the World. Edited by G. Lewis, B. Schrire, B. MacKinder & M. Lock. Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew. (2005)

Note

Polhill (1981f) recognised 4 genera and c. 710 species in Indigofereae. This treatment following Polhill (1994), Schrire (1995), Barker et al. (2000) and Schrire et al. (2003) recognises 7 genera and c. 768 species in the tribe (Fig. 44). The Indigofereae are predominantly African-Madagascan in distribution, occurring in seasonally dry vegetation types of the tropics and subtropics. The genus Indigofera (third largest in the Leguminosae) is pantropical in distribution.

Recent morphological-molecular analyses (Pennington et al., 2000a; Crisp et al., 2000; Wojciechowski et al., 2000, 2004; Hu, 2000; Kajita et al., 2001; Hu et al., 2002 and Wojciechowski, 2003) place Indigofereae at the base of a combined millettioid group of tribes (including Millettieae, Abreae, Phaseoleae, Desmodieae and Psoraleeae). This entire clade is sister to Hologalegina (comprising the robinioids and the Inverted Repeat Lacking Clade (IRLC)). Basally branching to these two clades are the South African Hypocalypteae and Australian tribes Mirbelieae and Bossiaeeae.

The Indigofereae (Barker et al., 2000; Schrire et al., 2003) comprises a Cyamopsis, Indigastrum, Microcharis and Rhynchotropis (CRIM) clade which is sister to the Indigofera-Vaughania clade. The Madagascan Phylloxylon is putatively the most basally branching genus in the tribe, although in some analyses in Schrire et al. (2003), Phylloxylon is sister to the CRIM clade.

Sister genus to Rhynchotropis (Barker et al., 2000)
Habit
Herbs
Ecology
Seasonally dry tropical forest margins, woodland, thicket, wooded grassland and grassland, often in damp swampy or riverine areas, or in shallow soil over rock
Distribution
Africa (except largely W Africa; c. 16 spp. in Somalia-Masai and c. 18 spp. in Zambezian to Sudanian regions), Arabian Peninsula and Madagascar (2 spp.)
[LOWO]

Sources

  • Flora of Somalia

    • Flora of Somalia
    • http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0

  • Herbarium Catalogue Specimens

  • Kew Names and Taxonomic Backbone

    • The International Plant Names Index and World Checklist of Vascular Plants 2024. Published on the Internet at http://www.ipni.org and https://powo.science.kew.org/
    • © Copyright 2023 International Plant Names Index and World Checklist of Vascular Plants. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0

  • Legumes of the World Online

    • http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0

  • World Checklist of Vascular plants (WCVP)

    • The International Plant Names Index and World Checklist of Vascular Plants 2024. Published on the Internet at http://www.ipni.org and https://powo.science.kew.org/
    • © Copyright 2023 World Checklist of Vascular Plants. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0