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Annual or perennial herbs, rarely shrubs or small trees, sometimes armed. Lvs usually pinnately 3-foliolate, rarely 1-foliolate or very rarely with 2-5 pairs of leaflets; principal lateral veins thin and straight, terminating at leaflet margin in a tooth; stipules adnate to petiole. Fls solitary or 2-3 in axillary racemes; bracts minute or 0 but floral lvs sometimes reduced to bracts. Calyx teeth 5. Stamens connate in a closed tube or rarely vexillary stamen free; alternate anthers versatile, remainder basifixed. Style glabrous; stigma terminal, subcapitate. Pod 2-valved, straight, dehiscent, not armed, 1-many-seeded; seeds estrophiolate, smooth or tuberculate.
Cal regular, deeply 5-cleft; standard orbicular; wings obovate-oblong, two-thirds as long as the standard; keel usually beaked and upcurved; stamens 10, monadelphous into a closed tube, the filaments alternately long and short; pod small, oblong or ovate, few–seeded, subtended or enclosed by the persistent cal; herbs or shrubs with stipules adnate to the petiole, serrate lfls, and solitary or paired axillary fls. 75, mainly Mediterranean.
