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Perennial herbs, subshrubs, or shrubs, twining or rarely erect. Leaves pinnately (1-)3-9-foliolate; stipules linear, small; stipels small or absent. Inflorescence axillary, racemose, solitary, paired, or clustered. Bracts styliform or linear. Calyx membranous, campanulate, sometimes cylindric-campanulate, 5-lobed; lobes subequal, all shorter than tube, upper 2 ± connate. Corolla longer than calyx; standard pandurate, sometimes reniform, ovate-oblong, or almost circular, silky hairy outside, base acuminate to wide and short stipe; wings usually narrowly elliptic, with stipe and auricles; keels oblong or obovate, equal to or shorter than wings. Stamens diadelphous; vexillary stamen free; anthers uniform. Ovary subsessile; ovules 2-8; style thick; stigma small, capitate. Legume oblong or linear-oblong, dehiscent, oblate, margins slightly thickened, 2-5-seeded. Seeds oblong-ovate, smooth; hilum short, central; aril spongy, with strophiole.
Ovary subsessile; ovules 2–8; style rather short, cylindrical, flattened or falcate and narrowed and pointed above, curved or almost hooked, glabrous, hairy along one side and at base or hairy all over; stigma small.
Standard violin-shaped or elliptic to rounded-oblong, without appendages or auricles, sometimes spurred at lower corners of the blade, with silky or bristly hairs outside; wings spurred or not.
Flowers in slender to thick axillary false racemes or almost sessile axillary clusters, paired to fasciculate on the rhachis.
Vexillary stamen free or lightly joined to the others; filaments alternatively long and rather shorter; anthers ± uniform.
Leaves digitately or pinnately 3–7-foliolate or 1-foliolate; stipules linear, small; stipels minute or absent.
Seeds oblong-ovoid; hilum short, central; rim aril developed, cartilaginous, with a scale-like extension.
Calyx 5-lobed, the lobes subequal, the upper pair free or joined for ± two-thirds of their length.
Pods oblong or linear-oblong, compressed.
Climbing or more rarely suberect herbs.
