[Notonia wightii Wight & Arnott; Neonotonia wightii (Wight & Arnott) Lackey]
(nat)
Twining or prostrate perennial herbs; stems 0.6-4.5 m long, often forming dense clumps, woody toward base, densely pubescent with long, spreading to appressed, rusty hairs. Leaflets elliptic, ovate, or rhombic-ovate, 1.5-16 cm long, 1.3-12.5 cm wide, glabrous to densely velvety pubescent, stipels subulate, ca. 2 mm long. Flowers in dense or lax pseudoracemes to 2-60 cm long; calyx sparsely to densely pubescent, the tube 1.5-2 mm long, the lobes linear-lanceolate, 2-3 mm long; corolla white or white with a mauve spot on the standard, drying orange, standard 4-7.5 mm long, wings with a tooth or lobe at juncture of lobe and claw. Pods linear-oblong, straight or curved, 15-36 mm long, 2.5-5mm wide, densely rusty pubescent, transversely grooved between the seeds, ± weakly septate. Seeds 4-7, dark reddish brown, oblong, somewhat compressed, 2.5-4 mm long, 1.5-3 mm wide, aril white. [2n = 22.] Native to Central and South America and the West Indies, now widely naturalized; in Hawai‘i cultivated as a fodder plant and naturalized in pastures, along roadsides, and in other low elevation, disturbed areas at least on 0‘ahu, Maui, Kaho‘olawe, and Hawaii. First collected on Hawaii in 1975 (Herbst & Ishikawa 5515, BISH).—Plate 88.
This species has been placed in the genus Neonotonia Lackey as N. wightii (Lackey, 1970). Neonotonia is distinguished from Glycine by its pseudoracemose inflorescences and calyx with the upper 2 lobes completely connate.