A perennial deciduous thorny shrub or small tree, to 12 m tall; trunk to 1.2 m in diameter, bark thick, brown or blackish, shallowly fissured. Leaves compound, commonly many more than 9 pairs, the leaflets mostly 5–10 mm long, linear-oblong, glabrous, often hairy, commonly rounded at the apex; stipular spines, if any, yellowish, often stout. Flowers perfect, greenish-yellow, sweet-scented, spikelike; corolla deeply lobate. Pods several-seeded, strongly compressed when young, thick at maturity, more or less constricted between the seeds, 10–25 cm long, brown or yellowish, 10–30-seeded. Seed compressed and oval or elliptic, 2.5–7 mm long, brown.

Cathartic, cyanogenetic, discutient, emetic, stomachic, and vulnerary.

Center for New Crops & Plant Products, at Purdue University
PROSEA (Plant Resources of South-East Asia) Foundation

5-hydroxytryptamine, apigenin, quercetin, tryptamine (plant); tannin (bark).

The pods are used (as tea or syrup) against digestive disturbances and skin lesions. It is used as a folk remedy for catarrh, colds, diarrhea, dysentery, excrescences, eyes, flu, headcold, hoarseness, inflammation, itch, measles, pinkeye, stomachache, sore throat, and wounds.