Description

Key Characters:

Growth Form: Climbing or trailing perennial herbs.

Stems:

Roots: Roots sometimes tuberous.

Leaves: Leaves compound (pinnately trifoliolate). Alternate. Petiolate. Stipules sometimes produced below the point of insertion. Leaflets stipellate.

Flowers: Flowers in clusters of 3 or more on a warty or cylindrical, thickened axis, axillary, long pseudoracemes or panicles, bracts small caducous. Flowers papilionaceous; bracteoles present, sometimes somewhat persistent. Calyx 5-lobed, the upper 2 lobes connate into an entire or bifid lip. Corolla blue to purple, standard with inflexed auricles, wing petals often adherent to middle of keel, keel petals subequal to wings, sometimes beaked. Stamens 10; upper stamen connate at least at the middle to the other 9, which are connate into a tube. Ovary superior, subsessile; ovules numerous; style terete (cylindrical), filiform; stigma capitate, terminal.

Fruit: Pods terete (cylindrical) or slightly flattened; dehiscent; with thin; woody or chartaceous; spirally curling valves; filled or septate between the seeds. Seeds several to numerous; compressed; suborbicular to subcylindrical; the hilum small; central.

Ploidy:

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