Description

Key Characters:

Growth Form: Perennial herbs, subshrubs, or small shrubs.

Stems: Stems ascending or erect, up to 35 dm long, weakly striate, appressed or spreading short–pubescent, taproot with slender branches, nodules often present.

Roots:

Leaves: Leaves compound (trifoliate). Alternate. Leaflets elliptic, obovate, or oblanceolate; 2.5–10.2 cm long, 0.7–3.5 cm wide. Apex rounded to acute, occasionally acuminate or mucronulate. Base cuneate or broadly cuneate. Upper surfaces glabrous or sparsely pubescent; lower surfaces appressed short–pubescent to densely spreading pubescent. Margins entire. Veins 5–20 on each side of midvein. Petioles 4–92 mm long. Stipules absent or minute and setaceous.

Flowers: Flowers in racemes, flowers 16–19 mm long, 10–30 in terminal, crowded inflorescences, these terminated by a tuft of curled bracts, rachis up to 26 cm long (incl. peduncle), bracts linear–triangular, 8–13 mm long, ascending, caducous. Flowers papilionaceous; bracteoles at apex of pedicel, linear–triangular. Calyx appressed short–pubescent to spreading pubescent, occasionally sericeous, the tube 4–5 mm long, the lobes 4.9–5.9 mm long, lateral lobes connate at apex. Calyx slightly bilabiate, the lobes shorter than to longer than the tube. Petals yellow with lines near base, standard 13–14 mm long, 18–21mm wide, wings oblong, 12.5–16 mm long, 7.8–9 mm wide, keel petals with a moderately long, non twisted beak, densely pubescent externally below beak, margins ciliate. Stamens 10, connate into a tube, the tube split at least at base on the upper side; anthers dimorphic, alternately long (and basifixed) and short (and versatile). Elongated anthers 3–3.3 mm long, short ones 1–1.1 mm long. Ovary superior.

Fruit: Pods brown at maturity; 2–3.5 cm long; stipitate; stipe 3–6 mm long; appressed short–pubescent. Seeds ca. 20 per pod; tan to brown; up to 3.5 mm long; smooth.

Ploidy: 2n = 16

Habitat: Growing in disturbed sites.

Elevation Range: 50–530 m.