3851.000 Cicer L.

Erect or prostrate annuals, or perennial herbs with annual stems from woody rootstocks, pubescent, sometimes the leaf rhachis, peduncles and stipules spinose. Leaves 3-foliolate or more usually pinnate, imparipinnate or paripinnate with the rhachis ending in a tendril or spine; leaflets conspicuously dentate.Flowers solitary or in 2–5-flowered axillary racemes; bracts small; bracteoles absent. Calyx nearly regular, 5-lobed; tube short, lobes subequal; corolla white, pink, purplish or blue, veined; standard obovate, narrowed into a broad claw, without appendages, wings oblong-obovate, free from the keel. Ovary sessile. Fruit pods, sessile, elliptic, inflated. Seeds subglobose to oblong-obovoid, beaked; hilum without an aril.

Worldwide: About 40 species, found in central and western Asia, one species endemic to Ethiopia.

Zimbabwe: 1 cultivated taxon.