| + | Annual, biennial or perennial, often shrubby; glabrous or villous: Lvs. usually pinnately foliolate, the stipules attached to the petiole: fls. papilionaceous, yellow, purple, pink or rarely white, solitary, 2-3 in the axils or in peduncled racemes; calyx bell-shaped, 5-parted, deeply cut, narrow; standard large, striped; stamens united in a tube, the members sometimes partly free: pod usually swollen, few-seeded.—Some 70 species, Canaries, Medit. region, to Cent, and N. Eu. A few of the perennial species are more or less in cult. They thrive under usual treatment; prop, by division and by seeds. Sometimes the Lvs. are 1-foliolate. |