Description

Key Characters:

Growth Form: Climbing perennial herbs, sometimes woody, rarely erect annual herbs.

Stems:

Roots:

Leaves: Leaves compound (usually pinnately trifoliate). Alternate. Lateral leaflets asymmetrical, basiscopic side ovate, acroscopic side elliptic. Petiolate. Stipules small, caducous. Leaflets stipellate.

Flowers: Flowers 1 to few in clusters, these crowded in long or short axillary racemes or pseudoracemes. Flowers papilionaceous. Calyx 5-lobed, upper 2 lobes connate into a larger bifid lobe. Corolla blue or violet, standard obovate, rhombic, or orbicular, with inflexed auricles at base. Stamens 10; upper stamen connate to the other 9 into a tube, sometimes distinct with age. Ovary superior; ovules few to numerous; style 1, glabrous apically; stigma terminal.

Fruit: Pods linear to oblong; subcylindrical to compressed; dehiscent; straight to falcate; ± transversely furrowed; ± thinly septate. Seeds oblong to suborbicular; the hilum short with a small scale-like rim–aril.

Ploidy:

Habitat:

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