Large climbing woody vines. Stems with sparse short pale fine spreading hairs when young, later glabrous. Leaves 21-32 cm; petiole 7-14 cm, with sparse or abundant hairs like stem; stipels not persistent; leaflets papery or rather leathery, abaxially with dense short fine half-adpressed hairs, adaxially glabrous or with similar but sparse hairs, lateral veins 5-8 pairs, gently curved, often rather closely spaced; terminal leaflet broadly elliptic-ovate or elliptic to slightly obovate or almost rhombic, 11-14 × ca. 8 cm, base rounded or slightly cuneate, apex broadly rounded with abrupt minute acumen; lateral leaflets 10-13.5 cm, width ratio of abaxial to adaxial halves 1.6-2:1. Inflorescence on old stem, over 10 cm, with ca. 9 nodes; bracts ± ovate, ca. 2 × 1.5 mm, densely hairy, persistent. Calyx densely adpressed hairy and often with sparse caducous bristles; tube 1.1-1.4 × ca. 2 cm; lateral lobes 3-6 mm, lowest 6-10 mm, upper lip indistinct or almost equaling lateral lobes. Corolla deep purple (possibly sometimes white); standard 3.4-4 cm, margin conspicuously pale pubescent in apical 1/3; wings very narrow, 6-7 × 1.5-2 cm, margin pubescent like standard in apical 1/3; keel 7.2-7.7 × ca. 1 cm. Legume linear, slightly curved, 47-60 × 3-5 cm, ca. 1.5 cm thick, woody, margin not or only slightly constricted between seeds (segments rectangular) but internal septa visible as transverse grooves, apex acute, base without narrow neck, densely minute spreading hairy, surface with several irregular undulating interrupted longitudinal woody ridges, each margin thickened into 2 ridges up to 1 mm high with a median groove running along suture; septum thin inside, ± woody. Seeds ca. 16, dull black, oblong-disk-shaped; hilum ca. 1/3 length of seed circumference; strophiole ca. 4 mm wide.
Home