Flat-topped tree 3·5–15(–18) m. tall, with raised corky bosses bearing curved prickles on the old deeply fissured very rough corky bark; flowering when leaves are not developed.. Stems grey, wrinkled, roughened by leaf-and peduncle-scars, soon glabrous, mostly prickly.. Leaves often borne on abbreviated side shoots; leaflets elliptic to broadly obovate or round, 1·2–5 cm. long and wide, rounded to deeply emarginate at the apex, cuneate to rounded at the base, minutely stellate pubescent in the young state, but soon quite glabrous or with scattered hairs on the main veins beneath; midrib without prickles; petiole 1–4·5 cm. long, pubescent or glabrous, sometimes prickly; rhachis 0·4–1·7 cm. long; petiolules 2–4 mm. long.. Inflorescences covered with deciduous ferruginous stellate hairs; rhachis 6–9 cm. long; peduncle 2·5–5 cm. long; pedicels 5–10 mm. long, stellate pubescent; bracts ovate, 2 mm. long and wide; bracteoles narrow, 2 mm. long, 0·5 mm. wide, all soon deciduous.. Calyx ellipsoid-fusiform, narrowed above, shortly, obscurely nodular-toothed, later splitting on the vexillar side to form a spathe 1–2·5 cm. long, at first densely ferruginous stellate floccose-tomentose, but soon glabrescent.. Standard scarlet, short-clawed, recurved, obovate, 2·5–4·5 cm. long, 2–3·5 cm. wide, rounded; keel and wings usually blood-red or crimson with margins and veins almost black, shiny, ± equal, ± a third to a half the length of the standard.. Pods stipitate, linear-oblong or falcate, compressed, 6·5–9 cm. long, 1·1–1·8 cm. wide, 1–2(–? few)-seeded, not or scarcely constricted between the seeds, densely stellate-tomentose when young, soon becoming glabrous; valves completely separating, somewhat wrinkled.. Seeds orange or red (? rarely yellowish), oblong-ellipsoid, longest dimension 1·1–1·2 cm., shorter dimensions 7–8 mm.; hilum elliptic, 3–4 mm. long.. Fig. 81, p. 551.
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