Description:

• Woody lianes or herbaceous climbers
• Leaves pinnately 3-foliolate, stipulate
• Flowers maroon, cardinal red, lilac or green, fairly conspicuous in axillary racemes; bracts small, sometimes caducous
• Calyx often hairy, with campanulate tube; 2 upper lobes connate, and lowest longer than 2 laterals
• Petals: vexillum ovate-orbicular, sessile, folded together, shortly clawed, eared at base with ears often upturned; wings incurved, sessile, eared, often adhering to keel; keel sessile, incurved at apex or rostrate, equalling or longer than wings, eared
• Stamens diadelphous; alternate filaments sometimes swollen at apex; anthers unequal
• Ovary sessile or stipitate, few-ovuled, surrounded by a cupular disc at base, villous; style filiform, incurved, often hairy with small, terminal stigma
• Pod thick, ovate, oblong or linear, 2-valved, septate, often covered with stinging hairs
• Seeds round or transversely oblong
• x = 11 (polyploidy)

Nomenclature:

• Mucuna Adans.
  • Adanson: 325 (1763) name conserved
  • Hutchinson: 433 (1964)
  • Hennessy: 17 (1991)
• Stizolobium P.Browne: 290 (1756)

Distribution & Notes:

• Global: Species ± 100, cosmopolitan in warm regions
• Southern Africa: Species 3, Northern Province, Mpumalanga, Swaziland and KwaZulu-Natal