Description

Key Characters:

Growth Form: Climbing or prostrate herbs or subshrubs, rarely erect herbs or small shrubs, usually from woody or tuberous rootstocks.

Stems:

Roots:

Leaves: Leaves compound (pinnately trifoliolate or occasionally unifoliolate). Alternate. Petiolate. Stipules truncate, 2–lobed, or spurred at base, or distinctly peltate. Leaflet stipels present and more or less persistent.

Flowers: Flowers usually in clusters, rachis usually thickened and glandular at point of insertion of flower clusters, these in axillary or terminal pseudoracemes or subumbellate clusters. Flowers papilionaceous, bracteoles present; bracteoles present. Calyx bilabiate, 5-lobed, upper lip 2-lobed or lobes completely connate, lower lip 3 lobed. Corolla usually yellow, blue, or purple, standard usually with 1–4 appendages, keel about as long as or longer than wings, obtuse or beaked, sometimes incurved up to 360º or twisted, and with a conical lateral pocket on the left–hand petal. Stamens 10; upper stamen distinct, the other 9 connate into a tube. Ovary superior; styles with a hardened or thin basal part and a thickened apical part, usually only bearded along inner face just below stigma or rarely with 2 rows of hairs below stigma, apex prolonged into a short or long beak; stigma lateral.

Fruit: Pods usually linear or linear–oblong; straight or curved; usually dehiscent. Seeds usually several to numerous; reniform or angular; ± with a well–developed aril.

Ploidy:

Habitat:

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