Aeschynomene pygmaea Welw. ex Baker

Leguminosae, B. Verdcourt. Flora Zambesiaca 3:6. 2000

Morphology General Habit

Herb or subshrub with several caespitose stems from a tough woody rhizome-like rootstock.

Morphology Stem

Stems 0.07–1.5 m tall, in burnt areas mostly unbranched and often leafless when flowering but in the absence of fire forming a branched leafy shrub; young shoots densely covered with short and rather long bristly tubercular-based yellowish hairs, older stems glabrescent, roughened by the hair bases or bark peeling to reveal a slightly fissured surface.

Morphology Leaves

Leaves alternate or subfasciculate, 14–38-foliolate; leaflets 1.5–7 × 0.3–1.8 mm, linear-oblong or linear, often slightly to distinctly falcate, acute or rounded and mucronulate at the apex, obliquely rounded at base, somewhat coriaceous, glabrous or ciliate; main nerve subcentral or submarginal; petiole and rhachis together 4–35 mm long, hairy like the young stems; petiolules 0.3 mm long; stipules 2.5–13 × 0.5–3 mm, linear-lanceolate to ovate-lanceolate, not appendaged or at the most slightly subcordate, ciliolate, scarious, conspicuously parallel-veined, sometimes subpersistent.

Morphology Reproductive morphology Inflorescences

Racemes or panicles terminal or axillary, 2–16 cm long hairy like the young stems; peduncles 0.3–4 cm long; pedicels 1.5–6(7) mm long, pubescent; bracts entire or 2–3-fid, 1.5–5 × 0.5–1.5 mm, ovate or ovate-lanceolate, ciliolate, soon deciduous; bracteoles 2–4.5 × 0.5–1 mm, ovate or ovate-lanceolate, ciliolate, deciduous.

Morphology Reproductive morphology Flowers Calyx

Calyx flushed crimson, glabrous or pubescent, 2-lipped; lips 3–6 × 2–3.5 mm, elliptic, one entire or narrowly emarginate, the other slightly 3-fid.

Morphology Reproductive morphology Flowers Corolla

Standard orange-yellow, ± rectangular, or wider at the base of the lamina, 4–11.5 × 2.5–4.5 mm, somewhat constricted in the middle, emarginate at the apex, truncate or subauriculate at the base; wings and keel orange-yellow, the petals of the latter not laciniate.

Morphology Reproductive morphology Fruits

Fruit of 1–2 articles joined by a narrow neck, each article ± semicircular, 5–8 × 4.5–6 mm, pubescent on margins or all over with fine tubercular-based hairs, reticulate.

Morphology Reproductive morphology Seeds

Seeds dark reddish-brown, 3.5 × 2.5 × 1 mm, rounded-reniform, slightly beaked beyond the small circular eccentric hilum.