Shrubs or medium sized trees, unarmed. Leaves alternate, sometimes subop-posite or opposite, but never exclusively so, odd pinnate; leaflets entire, often drying with purple mottling beneath; estipellate; stipules small, caducous. Info-rescences clustered racemes, axillary or cauline, appearing before or with the leaves; bracts inconspicuous, caducous, ebracteolate, pedicels present. Flowers often rose or rose tinged; hypanthium distinctively cup shaped, the calyx teeth short and broad or absent; petals 5, about the same length, free except the basally connate keel petals, short clawed, the standard nearly orbicular, erect or reflexed; stamens 10, diadelphous, the odd stamen free, the anthers all the same shape; ovary short stipitate, slender, straight, flattened, glabrous, the ovules several to 10 or more, the style glabrous, about 1/2 the length of the ovary, the stigma capitate. Fruit a dehiscent legume, stipitate, flattened, often wider toward the tip, the margin not or only slightly thickened, not septate and not or only faintly indented between the seeds on the outside, glabrous; the 2 valves hard and often coiling in dehiscence.
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