Description

Key Characters:

Growth Form: Erect, climbing, or creeping annual or perennial herbs.

Stems:

Roots:

Leaves: Leaves compound (pinnately trifoliate or rarely unifoliate). Alternate. Petiolate. Stipules strongly nerved. Leaflets stipellate.

Flowers: Flowers solitary or in clusters of 2(3) in long pseudoracemes, bracts caducous. Flowers papilionaceous. Calyx lobes 5, subequal or the lowest ones reduced. Corolla maroon, dark purple, crimson, or rarely white, wings longer than standard and keel, both wing and keel claws long, partly adnate to staminal tube, the keel twisted. Stamens 10; upper stamen distinct, the other 9 connate into a tube. Ovary superior; style 1, apical, bent near base and also with a thickened apical part abruptly bent 90º forming a squarish hook, bearded on the apical thickened part, primarily on upper (adaxial) side; stigma capitate.

Fruit: Pods cylindrical or compressed; straight or falcate; dehiscent; valves rather thin; spirally twisted. Seeds few to numerous.

Ploidy:

Habitat:

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