Description

Key Characters:

Growth Form: Woody lianas, climbing herbs, or sometimes erect herbs or shrubs, vegetative parts, calyx, and pods covered with stiff, irritating hairs.

Stems:

Roots:

Leaves: Leaves compound (pinnately trifoliate). Alternate. Petiolate. Stipules caducous. Leaflets stipellate.

Flowers: Flowers often bird–pollinated or bat–pollinated, usually elongated, in clusters of 2 to several, these grouped into pseudoracemes or in elongated or corymbose pseudopanicles, bracts and bracteoles usually caducous. Flowers papilionaceous. Calyx campanulate, bilabiate, the upper 2 lobes connate to form an entire or bifid lip. Corolla showy, variously colored, standard shorter than other petals, wings incurved, often coherent to keel, keel petals equal to or longer than wings, stiffened at apex. Stamens 10; upper stamen distinct, the other 9 connate into a tube; anthers often bearded, dimorphic, 5 larger ones subbasifixed, alternating with 5 shorter dorsifixed or versatile anthers, these usually also with shorter filaments. Ovary superior; ovules few; style 1, filiform, glabrous apically; stigma small, terminal.

Fruit: Pods ovoid to oblong or linear; in many species ribbed or covered with lamellae; usually densely covered with stiff; irritating hairs; dehiscent; sometimes scarcely so; septate or filled between the seeds. Seeds subglobose to oblong; with a short or linear hilum and a conspicuous rim–aril; or with a much elongated hilum and without a rim–aril.

Ploidy:

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