PLANT : Low, stiff, gnarled, aromatic shrubs.

STEMS : much-branched, unarmed, light gray-green, becoming gnarled and gray in age, with prickle-shaped glands and appressed to ascending long, straight, soft hairs.

LEAVES : alternate, deciduous, odd -pinnate with (10-)14-20(-30) pairs of obovate to orbicular, obtuse or shallowly notched, flat leaflets, glandular punctate especially beneath, densely pubescent; stipules small, deciduous.

INFLORESCENCE : a terminal, short, few-flowered raceme; bracts early deciduous.

FLOWERS : apetalous or very rarely with a small, inconspicuous pale yellow banner; calyx turbinate or campanulate, with tube 10-ribbed, with broad, short teeth, bearing 2-5 orange glands in the rib intervals, densely silky-hairy along margins and within; stamens 10, basally united; ovary 2-ovuled.

FRUIT : a 1-seeded indehiscent pod, exserted from the calyx, ellipsoid to obovoid, gray canescent, conspicuously red gland-dotted, beaked by a persistent style.

NOTES : 4 spp.; w US, Baja C. and coastal Son., Mex., Chile (for Errazuriz family of Chile). Barneby, Rupert C. 1977. Mem. New York Bot. Gard. 27:13-21, 594, 597.

REFERENCES: Rhodes, Suzanne, June Beasley and Tina Ayers. 2011. Fabaceae. CANOTIA 7: 1-13.