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A bean family herb. It can grow each year from seed or continue to grow from year to year. It can climb or trail over the ground. Stems can be 0.6-1.5 m long. The stems are covered with reddish-brown hairs. The leaves normally have 3 leaflets. The leaflets can be 1.5-22 cm long by 0.3-4 cm wide. They have fine hairs. The small veins are close together and at right angles to the midrib. The leaf stalk is 2-8 cm long. The flowers occur in the axils of leaves. There are 2-6 flowers. The flowering stalk is 4-25 cm long. The pea like flower has a pink to red standard with a yellow centre. The wings are purple and the keel white. The fruit are pods held erect and spreading. They are 3-8 cm long and 4-4.5 mm wide. The seeds are pink to grown with dark speckles. They are oblong and 3-4 mm long by 2-3 mm wide.
Leaflets 3, 1 on first nodes, 3–22 × 0.3–6 cm, ovate or elliptic to lanceolate or linear-oblong, rarely round, rounded to acuminate at the apex, rounded to subcordate at the base, with appressed pubescence of spaced bristly hairs on both surfaces; venation slightly raised on both surfaces, the arrangement of the tertiary veins characteristic, close, parallel and at right angles to the midrib; petiole 1.5–8.5 cm long; rhachis 0.5–2.5 cm long; stipules 5–15 × 2–4 mm, ovate-lanceolate, multinerved, prolonged and cordate at the base.
Calyx with appressed or spreading bristly white or dark brown hairs; tube 3–6 mm long; lobes 7–20 mm long, linear-lanceolate, subequal, the upper pair joined for c. one-fifth to one-quarter of their length.
Pods 4–7 cm × 3–4.5 mm, linear-cylindrical, straight, appressed bristly pubescent to spreading hirsute with white or very dark brown hairs, with a curved beak.
Flower pink to purple, 13–23 × 14–24 mm; pedicel 0.5–1.5 mm long, not expanding as the pod matures; bracteoles 5–12 × 1.5 mm, multinerved.
Standard with 2 appendages reduced to their lateral parts; keel without a beak, not twisted or slightly twisted towards the left.
Seed 2.5–5 × 2–3.5 mm; hilum excentric, c. three-quarters the length of the seed; rim aril developed as two parallel lines.
Peduncle 4–25 cm × 0.5–1.8 mm, as hairy as the stem; rhachis 0–2 mm long, 1–2-noded, internodes 1–2 mm long.
Stem densely covered with retrorse or spreading yellowish-brown hairs.
Annual or perennial trailing or climbing herb, 0.6–1 m long.
A twiner, grey-or yellowish-hairy
Yellow or purplish flowers.
Ovary 8–14-ovuled.
