Climbing vines, to 5 m. Young stems glabrous or with sparse fine adpressed hairs. Leaves widely varying in size, 7-25 cm; petiole 4.8-11.5 cm, glabrous or sparsely finely hairy; stipels 2-6 mm; leaflets papery or leathery, almost glabrous on both surfaces, lateral veins 4 or 5(-7) pairs, gently curved; terminal leaflet obovate-elliptic or elliptic, 4.5-10.5(-16) × 2.5-6(-9) cm, base rounded, apex caudate to abruptly shortly acuminate; lateral leaflets 5-8(-11) cm, ratio of abaxial to adaxial halves ca. 1.5:1. Inflorescence axillary, 6-40 cm, with 5-18 nodes, basal part without flowers but often with a few long acuminate bracts 2-3 cm; bracts at flowering nodes large, oblong or broadly ovate to elliptic with rounded often hooded apex, 1-2 cm, hairy; bracteoles linear-ovate or narrowly elliptic, to 13 × 4 mm; pedicels 8-10 mm, densely silky adpressed hairy. Calyx with dense silky short hairs and irritant bristles; tube 7-10 × 10-14 mm; lobes narrow, lowest 8-10 mm, laterals 5-6 mm. Corolla deep purple (rarely white); standard 2.5-3.5 cm; wings 4.5-5.5 × 1-1.3 cm; keel 4.8-5.7 cm. Legume asymmetrically oblong or ovate-oblong, 9-18 × 4.5-5.5 cm, ca. 1 cm thick, leathery, with red-brown irritant hairs, with narrowly rounded base and acute apex often with persistent style, both margins with pair of wings ca. 1 cm wide, both surfaces with 8-14 markedly oblique crowded winglike lamellae uniformly 4-5 mm high, mostly not interrupted nor branched, some extending onto marginal wings of fruit. Seeds 2-4, black, oblong or reniform, 1.7-2.5 × ca. 1.5 cm, 5-7 mm thick; hilum length 1/2-3/4 of seed circumference. Fl. Jan-Mar, fr. Mar-May.
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