Mucuna nigricans - Black Jade Vine

Black Jade Vine is a woody climber, with branches sparsely velvet-hairy, and blackish purple flowers hanging in racemes. Flowers are borne in racemes, usually in leaf-axils, drooping, flower-cluster-stalk up to 30 cm long. Flowers are clustered in threes; each cluster supported by a deciduous bract. Flower-stalk is about 1.2 cm long, calyx 1.7-2.5 cm long, velvety, teeth almost as long as the tube. Sepals are usually triangular, lowest markedly longest. Flowers are dull purple, vexillum 3.7-3.8 cm long, keel 5-6.3 cm long, incurved. Leaves are are trifoliolate, leaf-stalk 7.5-15 cm long, twisted at the base, leaflet about 15 cm long, about 10 cm broad, elliptic, tapering, sparsely velvet-hairy on both sides; lateral leaflets oblique, broader than the at branch-ends; stipels 3.5-4.0 mm long; stipules about 7.5 mm long. Fruit is 10-15 cm long, about 5.0 cm broad, obliquely plaited. 3-4-seeded. about 1.2 cm broad wings at each suture on either side. Black Jade Vine is found in the Himalayas, from Nepal to Bhutan, at altitudes of 600-1200 m, South India, SE Asia, Malaysia, China. Flowering: July-October.