Erect herb, usually less than 1 m tall; stems ribbed, appressed-pubescent. Leaves simple, nearly sessile; blades obovate, rounded to emarginate at apex, tapered gradually to base, 3-10 cm long, 1.5-2.5 cm wide, glabrous above, appressed-pubescent below, generally bluish-green and lighter below. Racemes terminal, ca 20 cm long; pedicels ca 1 cm long, spreading to reflexed; calyx strigillose, ca 1.5 cm long, lobed ca two-thirds its length, the lobes subequal, acute, those subtending the standard broader; standard ca 2.5 cm long and 3 cm wide, yellow with dark nectar guidelines near base inside and with a broad maroon to brown spot outside; wings ca 2 cm long, ca 1.2 cm wide, covering keel at apex, the keel deeply saccate, the common margins fused but the free portion folded near apex to form a funnel, the lower margins of the keel densely pubescent; stamens 10, fused in basal half into an open-sided tube with alternating long and short anthers, the longer anthers ca 3 mm long, borne on the shorter filaments, shedding pollen in bud, the shorter anthers probably sterile; style strongly bent at about the height of the sterile anthers, the stigma flat-tipped, ciliolate, the trichomes distal, antrorse; pollen about the consistency of cake frosting, squeezed out by stigma and trichomes. Pods oblong, inflated, glabrate, ca 3.5 cm long, brown to black; seeds ca 10, reniform, flat, ca 2 mm diam, becoming black at maturity. Croat 8659. Rare, in clearings; collected once in recent years in the Laboratory Clearing, where it had possibly been planted. The species was once abundant on the island. With the reduction in the number of clearings, it has probably disappeared, though it might easily reoccur in one of the two large clearings. Flowers and fruits throughout the year.