Description

Key Characters:

Growth Form: Herbs, shrubs, or sometimes trees, usually armed with prickles or stipular spines.

Stems:

Roots:

Leaves: Leaves compound (bipinnate). Alternate. Pinnae with few to numerous pairs of opposite or subopposite leaflets. Rarely reduced to phyllodes. Stipules present, not spinescent, usually 2 per pinna, small, caducous.

Flowers: Flowers in heads or spikes, axillary and solitary or fasciculate or racemose. Flowers bisexual (perfect) or staminate, mimosaceous. Calyx usually minute, irregularly lobed or minutely toothed, sometimes pappus-like. Corolla (3)4(–6)-lobed. Stamens as many as or twice as many as corolla lobes; filaments distinct, exserted. Ovary superior, usually sessile; ovules 2 or more.

Fruit: Pods flat; straight or coiled; usually prickly; indehiscent but separating into 1–seeded segments; leaving the replum intact as an empty skeleton. Seeds ovoid or subglobose.

Ploidy:

Habitat:

Elevation Range: