Commemorating Richard van der Schot (d. 1819), head gardener at Schoenbrunn, Vienna, and coexplorer of N America with botanist Jacquin.

Evergreen shrubs or trees without thorns. Leaves alternate, compound, odd-pinnate, with 3-18 pairs of leaflets. Flower clusters terminal or lateral, branched, dense, on the old wood. Flowers with calyx lobes 4, united at the base to form a tube. Petals 5, red or pink, soon shed. Stamens 10, free or united at the base. Fruit pods woody, flattened, generally curved and beaked with a rim that often remains on the tree after the valves have been shed.

Grown for the evergreen foliage and dense flower clusters.

4-5 species from S Africa.

Seed.

Some species with edible seed known as Boer Beans.

Trees with flowers mostly red in dense clusters; fruit pod with margin separating from the valves.

Codd (1956), Isely (1975).

Source: Spencer, R. (2002). Caesalpiniaceae. In: Spencer, R.. 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.