Virgilia oroboides flowers

The sweet-scented, pea-shaped Virgilia oroboides flowers are pink in various shades or violet. They grow stalked in raceme-shaped sprays of about 10 cm long from upper leaf axils and near stem-tips.

In each flower the rounded, centrally folded banner petal flexes back, the pair of wings variably curving below the banner in picture, the keel somewhere between them. The ten free stamens ending in small anthers are together in a tube around the style. The stalked ovaries are densely hairy, the styles curved and their stigmas small. Bloomtime is an abundantly flowering affair in the earlier part of summer or later in autumn.

The specific name, oroboides, is derived from Orobus, a genus name of certain sweetpea type plants bearing similar flowers. The Afrikaans name, keurboom, means choice tree, the name warranted by the flowering tree's performance in gardens (Venter, 2012; Coates Palgrave, 2002; Rycroft, 1980; iNaturalist).