Abstract: A review of the genus Crotalaria is presented, the genus is one of the largest genera in angiosperms with ca. 700 species distributed globally. The main centre of biodiversity is Africa with ca. 540 species. Carolus Linnaeus was the first to describe the genus Crotalaria; he named 13 species in his Species Plantarum of 1753. The first infrageneric classification of the species within the genus was given by (Lamarck 1786), he divided the genus into two groups which are simple leaved group and trifoliate, digitate leaved group.