Classical name.
Annual, biennial and perennial herbs or shrubs. Leaves mostly pinnate, occasionally of 1 or 3 leaflets. Flowers in dense heads, clover-like. Stamens 10, united into a tube. Fruit cylindrical, enclosed by the persistent inflated sepals. Occasionally grown for the ornamental clover-like flower heads.
30 species from NE Africa, Macaronesia, the Mediterranean and W Asia.
Annuals by seeds, shrubs by division and cuttings.
Clover-like flower heads with basal bracts.
Source: (2002). Fabaceae. In: . Horticultural Flora of South-eastern Australia. Volume 3. Flowering plants. Dicotyledons. Part 2. The identification of garden and cultivated plants. University of New South Wales Press.