Liana; young branchlets and petioles long-pilose. Leaves trifoliolate; stipules with a produced basal lobe; petioles 4-9 cm long; leaflets elliptic, rounded or sometimes very abruptly acuminate at apex, rounded, truncate, or subcordate at base, 7-15 cm long, 4-13 cm wide, becoming glabrous above, strigillose below. Racemes to 45 cm long; inflorescences and bracts dark ferruginous-pubescent; rachises studded with tuberculate knobs on which the flowers develop; bracts linear, erect; pedicels 4-6 mm long at anthesis; flowers purple; calyx to 1.2 cm long; standard to 3 cm long, longer than wide; stamens with 5 anthers fertile, 5 sterile. Legumes completely indehiscent, 10-14 cm long, to 5.5 cm wide and 1-1.7 cm thick, purplish-pilose (dark ferruginous-pubescent when young), only slightly concave along the upper margin, not at all constricted between the seeds, obliquely sulcate, not sulcate along the lower margin; seeds plump, 3 or 4, ca 3 cm diam, brown with black mottling. Croat 6726. Occasional, along the shore; probably less common than D. reflexa. Flowers mostly in the rainy season, especially in October. The fruits are nearly full size by November or December and seem to ripen by May. Belize to Panama, the Guianas, and Brazil; Trinidad and Granada. In Panama, known only from tropical moist forest in the Canal Zone, Bocas del Toro, Herrera, Panama (Perlas Islands), and Darien.