Description

Key Characters:

Growth Form: Climbers, erect herbs, shrubs, or rarely small trees, pubescent with fine, minutely uncinate hairs.

Stems:

Roots:

Leaves: Leaves compound. Alternate. Blades pinnately (1)3–9–foliate. Petiolate. Stipules present, striate, persistent. Leaflet stipels present.

Flowers: Flowers solitary or paired in leaf axils or in racemes or sometimes arising along old wood. Flowers papilionaceous, resupinate. Bracteoles large, striate, covering the flower buds. Calyx 5-lobed, lower lobe usually largest, upper 2 lobes connate only at base. Corolla white, red, or blue, standard much larger than wings and keel. Stamens 10; upper stamen distinct, the other 9 connate into a tube. Ovary superior, stipitate; ovules 2 to numerous.

Fruit: Pods dehiscent; linear–oblong; compressed; sometimes longitudinally ribbed; filled with soft tissue between the seeds; apex beaked. Seeds 1 to numerous; ellipsoid to subglobose; compressed.

Ploidy:

Habitat:

Elevation Range: