High climbing vine, stems slender, slightly angled, minutely tomentulose, tar-dily glabrescent. Leaves trifoliolate, the leaflets about equal, 9-15 cm long, 5-9 cm wide, apically short acuminate, mucronate, manifestly costate, the terminal leaflet with 5-6 major veins on each side, the lateral leaflets strongly oblique, chartaceous, velutinous, later glabrescent especially above, with only a few hair bases remaining; petiolules 7-10 mm long, tomentose, glabrescent and turning black; petioles mostly shorter than the leaves, tomentose, glabrescent; stipules caducous; stipels ca. 3 mm long. Inflorescences pendant, contracted, racemes with peduncle elongate, to 5 m long, slender, flexuous, minutely tomentose ve-lutinous, the raceme enclosed in bud by gray velutinous, papery deciduous bracts and forming a globose 'bud' ca. 5 cm across, sinuous; pedicels velutinous, 15-18 mm long upon inflorescence opening, becoming 5 cm long at anthesis and stout in fruit. Flowers greenish or yellowish, the calyx deciduous, cupular, velutinous outside with appressed, ascending gray or golden hairs, ca. 10-15 mm long, pilose inside, the teeth small, deltoid umbonate; corolla ca. 4 cm long, drying dark, the standard 18-22 mm long, the wings and keel narrowly tubular, exserted about 1/2 their length from the standard; anthers basally barbate with elongate hairs, the stigma capitate, a tuft of ascending hairs. Fruit oblong, flat, 1-6 seeded, 14-25 cm long, 5 cm wide, the margin conspicuously undulate between the seeds, softly villous outside, lustrous within and falsely septate between the seeds; seeds dis-coid, black, 2-3 cm wide, ca. 0.8 cm thick, the hilum linear around 3/4-4/5 of the periphery, lighter colored.
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