Glycine tabacina

Glycine tabacina is a slender perennial herb of the Fabaceae family growing as a prostrate to trailing or weakly twining vine with stems 0.3-1.5 m long arising annually from a slender taproot or short woody crown. Stems are wiry, slender, terete and clothed with short appressed to spreading hairs. Leaves are alternate, pinnately trifoliolate with petioles 1-4 cm long; leaflets are linear-elliptic to oblong-lanceolate, 1.5-5 cm long and 3-12 mm wide, entire, obtuse at the apex and rounded at the base, finely hairy on both surfaces but more conspicuously so on the underside. Stipules are small, lanceolate, persistent and brown-streaked. Inflorescences are short axillary racemes 1-5 cm long bearing two to six flowers on slender peduncles longer than the subtending leaf. Each flower is a small pea-flower 5-10 mm long with a five-toothed tubular calyx and a corolla coloured pale lilac to deep purple-blue, with a paler standard often marked with yellow at the base. The fruit is a slender linear-oblong pod 2-4 cm long that is finely hairy, gradually narrowed at both ends, and dehiscent into two twisted valves at maturity. Native to a wide range of grasslands, woodlands and open habitats in eastern Asia, Australia and across the Pacific.