Description

Key Characters:

Growth Form: Erect or spreading perennial herbs or subshrubs, often glandular hispid with stiff hairs.

Stems:

Roots:

Leaves: Leaves compound (pinnately trifoliate or rarely unifoliolate). Alternate. Apex biapiculate. Petiolate, leaflets subsessile. Stipules adnate to petioles, persistent.

Flowers: Flowers in dense, axillary or terminal, specialized inflorescences composed of 1–flowered elements, often accompanied by a plumose, filiform axis (inflorescence rudiment), main bract 1–3–foliolate, secondary bracts entire or bifid. Flowers bisexual (perfect), papilionaceous; bracteoles 1–2, linear, persistent. Calyx 5-lobed, membranous, connate basally. Corolla usually orangish yellow, inserted on calyx tube. Stamens 10, connate into a tube, eventually splitting on upper side, upper ones connate into a lip, the lowermost longest; anthers alternately long (subbasifixed) and short (versatile). Ovary superior; ovules 1–3.

Fruit: Pods oblong; compressed; articulate; articles 1–2; usually 1 article aborted; often reticulate; apex tipped by the persistent; hooked style base. Seeds ovoid or oblong; compressed.

Ploidy:

Habitat:

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