Description

Key Characters:

Growth Form: Herbs, sometimes woody at base, or occasionally shrubs.

Stems: Stems green, often becoming purple, glabrous to densely pubescent, taproot with slender branches, nodules often present.

Roots:

Leaves: Leaves simple or compound (trifoliate). Alternate. Margins entire. Petiolate. Stipules filiform to foliaceous or sometimes absent.

Flowers: Flowers in racemes, these terminal, leaf–opposed, or in the leaf axils, bracts small, rarely foliaceous, sometimes caducous before anthesis. Flowers papilionaceous; bracteoles small, rarely absent. Calyx slightly bilabiate, the lobes shorter than to longer than the tube. Petals Standard petal suborbicular or obovate, wing petals usually oblong, attached by a claw continuous with the lower margin (cleaver–shaped), keel petals beaked, the distal portion ± twisted. Stamens 10, connate into a tube, the tube split at least at base on the upper side; anthers dimorphic, alternately long (and basifixed) and short (and versatile). Ovary superior, usually stipitate; style curved or geniculate, usually bearded toward apex.

Fruit: Pods inflated; subglobose to subcylindrical; dehiscent; sometimes tardily so; stipitate or sessile. Seeds 1 to numerous; oblique; cordiform; smooth; sometimes with a conspicuous aril.

Ploidy:

Habitat:

Elevation Range: