Description

Key Characters:

Growth Form: Lianas or shrubs, often high–climbing.

Stems:

Roots:

Leaves: Leaves compound (pinnately trifoliate). Alternate. Petiolate. Stipules present usually produced below point of insertion. Leaflet stipels setaceous to filiform.

Flowers: Flowers several clustered on a conspicuous short, cylindrical, thickened axis, these arranged in long, axillary pseudoracemes or sometimes cauliflorous, bracts usually caducous. Flowers papilionaceous; bracteoles present, caducous. Calyx 5-lobed, the upper 2 teeth partly connate, the lowermost lobe smaller than or subequal to lateral lobes. Corolla blue, violet, or white, standard orbicular or obovate, reflexed, auriculate at base, keel petals incurved, obtuse or beaked. Stamens 10, 9 of them connate into a tube, the upper stamen distinct at base, connate to the tube at middle; anthers medifixed. Ovary superior, slightly stipitate; ovules 2 to numerous; style incurved, thickened, glabrous apically; stigma capitate, terminal.

Fruit: Pods indehiscent or tardily dehiscent; linear–oblong to semiorbicular; flat or slightly inflated; coriaceous or woody; often with 2 ridges or wings near the upper–or both suture(s); filled between the seeds. Seeds 1–3(to several); lenticular or reniform; laterally flattened; usually with an oblong hilum encircling ca. ⅔–¾ of the seed.

Ploidy:

Habitat:

Elevation Range: