Description
Key Characters:
Growth Form:
Shrubs up to 3 m tall.
Stems:
Young stems green, flexible, cylindrical, longitudinally striate, compressable, medullate, glabrous.
Roots:
Leaves:
Leaves simple, few, caducous, scale-like but green.
Alternate.
Blades oblong–linear to lanceolate, 1–3 cm long, 0.2–0.5 cm wide.
Surfaces green.
Leaflet margins entire.
Subsessile.
Stipules absent.
Flowers:
Flowers numerous in terminal racemes.
Flowers papilionaceous, pedicellate. Pedicels with a small caducous bract at base and 2 bracteoles at apex.
Calyx spathaceous, split along upper side, minutely 5-toothed.
Corolla yellow, 20–25 mm long, wing petals distinct, shorter than keel, keel obtuse, curved upward.
Stamens 10, connate into a tube; anthers with a tuft of hairs at base.
Ovary superior; ovules numerous.
Fruit:
Pods straight; linear; 4–10 cm long; 0.5–0.8 cm wide; pubescent when young; dehiscent; subseptate between the seeds.
Seeds 10–18; black; ellipsoid; transversely arranged; 5–7 mm long; 3–4 mm wide with a collar-like rim–aril.
Ploidy:
2n = 48; 52; 54
Habitat:
Elevation Range: