Plants shrubs or trees, pubescent with no-glandular hairs, sometimes also with darker, glandular based hairs. leaves clustered on short shoots or alternate on young growth, odd-pinnate; stipules striate, persistent; leaflets more or less alternate or opposite, minutely punctate. Inflorescences axillary, racemes, panicles, or solitary flowers. Calyces 5-lobed, the upper lobes more or less united, the lowest usually the longest; corollas caducous, banner petals glabrous or pubescent medially and/or along the upper margin; stamens usually fused in 2 groups of 5; discs flat, produced from inner part of the hypantha; ovaries stipitate, with 2-5-ovules. Pods breaking transversely into 1-4 1-seeded, indehiscent segments; segments more or less straight, flat, thin, broadly oblong, oblong-elliptic, or suborbicualt, abruptly narrowing at the ends; seeds flat, hila near distal end.
Zygocarpum inlucdes six species, two on the Arabian Peninsula, one of Socotra. and three in Somalia and Somaliland. Its species used to be included in Ormocarpum. They differ morphologically in their flat intrastaminal discs and by the abruptly narrowing pod segments.
Key to the species of Zygocarpum in Somaliand and Somalia.
Thulin, M. & M. Lavin (2001) Systematic Botany 26: 317
Note: GBIF records include introduced and cultivated plants. Consequently, the distribution shown often differs from statements about a taxon's native distribution.