Large climbing vines. Stems glabrous or with sparse reddish brown short hairs at nodes. Leaves 29-33 cm; petiole 6-13 cm, glabrous or with reddish brown short hairs; stipels slender 4-6 mm; leaflets thinly leathery or papery, glabrous or with reddish brown short hairs abaxially, lateral veins 4 or 5 pairs, uniformly strongly curved; terminal leaflet elliptic or elliptic-obovate, 11-15.5 × 3-8.5 cm, base rounded, apex with abrupt acumen ca. 1.5 cm; lateral leaflets 9-15 cm, width ratio of abaxial to adaxial halves ca. 1.7:1. Inflorescence ca. 15 cm, with 4 or 5 nodes spaced throughout length; bracts caducous; pedicels ca. 1 cm, with dark brown adpressed short hairs. Calyx with dark brown short adpressed hairs and red-brown caducous bristles; tube ca. 1 × 1.5 cm; lobes narrowly triangular, lowest ca. 10 mm and laterals ca. 7 mm, upper lip sometimes equaling lateral lobes. Corolla deep purple; standard 3.7-5 cm, with margin conspicuously pubescent in apical 1/3; wings 6-7 × 2-2.5 cm, ca. 2/3 of keel in length, apex with pubescent margin like standard; keel 7.5-9 cm. Legume asymmetric, oblong, 16-17 × ca. 4.5 cm, leathery, clothed with adpressed short hairs and sparse irritant bristles, with acute apex and persistent style, base rounded, both margins with a pair of wings 6-15 mm wide, both surfaces with 12-16 markedly obliquely transverse well-spaced parallel thinly textured lamellae up to ca. 6 mm high ± adpressed to surface and occasionally branching or interrupted, not extending onto marginal wings of fruit. Seeds 2 or 3. Fl. Dec, fr. Apr.
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