Description

Key Characters:

Growth Form: Trees, shrubs, or herbs, with extrafloral nectaries (glands) on petioles (in Hawai'i).

Stems:

Roots:

Leaves: Leaves compound (paripinnate). Alternate. Leaflets opposite. Petiolate. Stipules present.

Flowers: Flowers in racemose inflorescences, peduncles sometimes adnate to stem. Flowers caesalpinaceous. bracteoles 2. Calyx lobes imbricate. Petals yellow, ± spotted red near the claw or suffused with orange, nearly always unequal, the standard usually interior in bud, sometimes exterior on 1 or both sides, the 2 abaxial petals variously oblique. Stamens (2–)4–10, all similar; filaments straight, short; anthers basifixed, equal or unequal, if unequal, then not larger toward abaxial side of flower, puberulent along lateral sutures, dehiscent by apical pores or short slits. Ovary superior.

Fruit: Pods strongly compressed; rarely winged; elastically dehiscent; the valves coiled. Seeds smooth or pitted; with a dilated funiculus; without pleurograms.

Ploidy:

Habitat:

Elevation Range: