Description

Key Characters:

Growth Form: Annual herbs with taproots.

Stems: Stems decumbent, not rooting at the nodes, 1–4 dm long, branched, glabrous.

Roots:

Leaves: Leaves compound. Alternate. Leaflets obovate or narrowly obovate, 10–20 mm long, 6–10 mm wide. Leaflet surfaces glabrous. Margins denticulate or serrulate in upper 2/3. Lateral veins ending at margins. Petiolate. Stipules ovate to lanceolate, adnate to petioles up to 2/3 their length.

Flowers: Flowers in heads, axillary, in flowering stage more or less discoid, ca. 10 mm in diameter, peduncles 10–60 mm long. Flowers papilionaceous; pedicels 0–1 mm long, each flower resupinate, bracts absent, bracteoles absent. Calyx tube bilabiate, 1.5–2 mm long, inflated up to 8 mm long in fruit, stiff and membranous, reticulate-veined, the throat open, glabrous, the teeth 2–3 mm long, the upper 2 largest, divergent to recurved in fruit. Corolla pink or purple, becoming brown, 2–8 mm long. Stamens 10; upper stamen distinct, the other 9 connate into a tube.

Fruit: Pods membranous; oblong to ovoid; dehiscent; enclosed in the bladdery calyx. Seeds 1–2; brown or blackish; ovoid; ca. 1.5 mm long.

Ploidy: 2n = 14; 16; 32

Habitat:

Elevation Range: