Description

Key Characters:

Growth Form: Perennial herb, branching occasionally.

Stems: Stems erect, ascending, or sometimes prostrate, but not rooting at the nodes, 2-9 dm long, many-branched from base.

Roots:

Leaves: Leaves compound. Alternate. Leaflets obovate to obcordate, 10–30 mm long, 10–18 mm wide. Apex subulate, gradually contracted. Margins serrulate to denticulate. Lateral veins ending at margins. Petiolate. Stipules partly herbaceous, ovate, adnate to petioles ca. 1/3 their length.

Flowers: Flowers in heads, axillary, subglobose, (10–)25 mm in diameter, peduncles up to 100 mm long. Flowers papilionaceous; pedicels 4–5 mm long, reflexed after anthesis, and elongating to 7–10 mm long, bracts elliptic, bracteoles absent. Calyx tube 1.5–2.5 mm long, 5–nerved and with 5 less conspicuous nerves between them, the throat open, glabrous, the teeth unequal, 2–3 mm long. Corolla purple or white, (5–)7–10 mm long, aging pink or flesh–colored, becoming brown and persistent in fruit. Stamens 10; upper stamen distinct, the other 9 connate into a tube. Ovary superior.

Fruit: Pods subreniform; slightly exserted from calyx. Seeds 2–4; reddish; ovoid.

Ploidy: 2n = 16; 32

Habitat:

Elevation Range: