Shrubs, scandent, 2-5 m long. Stems grayish yellow, splitting, glabrous or puberulous. Leaves with 5 leaflets; leaflet blades lanceolate, oblong, or narrowly oblong, 5-15 X 1.5-6 cm, abaxially grayish glabrous, sparsely puberulous, or yellow hirsute, adaxially glabrous, midvein abaxially raised and adaxially sunken, secondary veins 6-9 on each side of midvein, reticulate veins evident on both surfaces or only abaxially, base rounded or sometimes subcordate, apex acute, acuminate, or rarely obtuse. Panicles terminal, 10-25(-40) cm, yellow puberulous; flowering branchlets 6--15 cm, spreading, nodes with 1 flower and close together. Flowers 1.2-2.4 cm; corolla purple; standard broadly ovate, outside silvery to rusty sericeous, without basal calluses, base subcordate; ovary linear, tomentose, with 8 or 9 ovules. Legume linear to oblong, 7-12 X 1.5-2 cm, flat, gray tomentose, with 3-5 seeds; valves thin or woody. Seeds oblong or subglobose, ca. 8 X 6 mm.

Emmenagogue (stem)

Plants For A Future

The stem bark is used in the treatment of anaemia and rheumatoid muscular aches. The stem is decocted in water and used in the treatment of anaemia, amenorrhea, dysmenorrhoea, infantile paralysis, myalgia, numbness of the limbs, rheumatism and wet dreams.

Jing-Nuan Wu. An Illustrated Chinese Materia Medica. P: 604, Oxford University Press, Inc.2005.