Description
Key Characters:
Growth Form:
Climbing or trailing herbs, usually with an often lobed, turnip–shaped tuber up to 30 cm in diameter.
Stems:
Stems up to 6 m long, pubescent.
Roots:
Roots tuberous.
Leaves:
Leaves compound.
Alternate.
Leaflets broadly ovate or broadly rhombic, 3–18 cm long, 4–20 cm wide.
Margins irregularly toothed.
Veins ending at leaf margins, the margins apiculate at the endpoint of each vein.
Petiolate.
Stipules lanceolate. Leaflets stipellate.
Flowers:
Flowers in pseudoracemes up to 70 cm long, in clusters on a short, warty, lateral axis, these in long pseudoracemes, bracts and bracteoles small, setaceous, caducous.
Flowers papilionaceous.
Calyx lobes 5, the upper 2 lobes connate into a larger bifid lobe.
Corolla blue, bluish mauve, or pale purple, standard with a green central patch, 1.5–2 cm long, standard obovate, with a transverse ridge inside at base, with inflexed auricles, wing petals retrorsely appendaged, keel petals incurved, obtuse.
Stamens 10; upper stamen distinct, the other 9 connate into a tube.
Ovary superior; style 1, apical, dorsoventrally flattened, broadened toward apex, with a row of antrorse hairs on the upper (adaxial) side extending up from the ovary; stigma subglobose, lateral.
Fruit:
Pods straight or curved; 7.5–14 cm long; 1–1.8 cm wide; dehiscent; linear–oblong; compressed; thickened around the seeds; with transverse impressions between each seed.
Seeds 4–12; pale brown to purplish black; ellipsoid or rounded; 8–10 mm long; 7–10 mm wide; hilum small.
Ploidy:
2n = 20; 22
Habitat:
Elevation Range:
ca. 260 m.
Island Status
Kaua'i
Only found in cultivation
O'ahu Only found in cultivation
Molokai Only found in cultivation
Hawai'i Naturalized