Flora of North America species comparison

of the latter are characterized as shrubs or creeping herbs, the stems with long, yellow-brown, spreading hairs (versus shorter, more appressed hairs in subsp. incana), inflorescence bracts usually 4–10 (versus 1–3) mm, and calyx lobes pilose (versus glabrate).

sometimes suffrutescent basally, erect to ascending, 25–130 cm, hirsute-villous to strigose-hirsute, hairs mostly ascending.

3-foliolate;

stipules sometimes caducous, triangular, 3–8 mm;

leaflet blades elliptic, ovate, or obovate, (10–)30–70 mm, length 1.3–2 times width, surfaces glabrous, sometimes hairy on abaxial midvein.

5–30-flowered, terminal, subterminal, or lateral, 5–23 cm;

bracts persistent or caducous, filiform.

calyx broadly cylindrical, sometimes basally truncate, not deflexed against pedicels, 1.5–3 mm, lobes narrowly triangular, glabrous or slightly puberulous;

corolla yellow with prominent reddish lines near base, each wing with a reddish purple spot at base, 9–16 mm.

straight, 25–35 × 10–15 mm, villous-hirsute to hispid-hirsute.

subspecies of Crotalaria incana are native to southeast Africa, where they are partially sympatric.

purpurascens (Lamarck) Milne-Redhead occurs also in Madagascar.

= 14.