[Hedysarum tortuosum Sw.]
(nat) Florida beggarweed
Erect herbs or subshrubs 5-20 dm tall; stems hooked pubescent. Leaves trifoliolate, leaflets elliptic to ovate, terminal one 3-10 cm long, 1.5-5 cm wide, both surfaces appressed pubescent with minute hooked hairs, apex obtuse to acute, base cuneate to obtuse, petioles 1-5 cm long. Flowers numerous in open, racemose inflorescences 3-8 cm long, occasionally these grouped into diffuse, paniculate inflorescences up to 25cm long, rachis densely glandular pilose, less so with age, and puberulent with hooked hairs, pedicels slender, 10-15 mm long; corolla pink to bluish purple, 5-6 mm long. Pods stipitate, (3-)5-7-jointed, (1.5-) 3cm long, pubescent with hooked hairs, articles usually orbicular to broadly elliptic, 3-4.5mm long, 3-3.5 mm wide. [2n = 22.] Native to tropical and subtropical America, now widely naturalized in the Paleotropics; in Hawaii naturalized and common in pastures, dry, disturbed areas near the coast, open, disturbed wet forest, and along roadsides, 20-670 m, on Kauai, 0‘ahu, Maui, Kaho‘olawe, and Hawaii. First collected on Maui in 1913 (Collector unknown s.n., BISH).—Plate 90.
This species is characteristic in having long, ascending to spreading pedicels in fruit. The articles are distinctively twisted alternately along the margins when young.