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Sahyadri Wild Bean
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Sahyadri Wild Bean
P Native Photo: Aakash Raut
Common name: Sahyadri Wild Bean
Botanical name: Vigna sahyadriana    Family: Fabaceae (Pea family)

Sahyadri Wild Bean is a twining herb with stem slender, 2-3 m long, densely covered with 3.5-4 mm long, yellowish brown hairs. Leaves are 3-foliolate, 15-30 cm long including 9-14 cm long leaf-stalk; leaf-stalks densely covered with 2.5-3 mm long yellowish brown hairs; axis 2-2.3 cm long; stipules elliptic, 1.3-1.5 x 0.35-0.45 cm, peltate. Leaflets are membranous, velvet-hairy with 1-2 mm long white hairs; end leaflet narrowly ovate to rhomboidal, 11.5-12.5 x 6.5-7.5 cm, blunt or rounded at base, pointed at tip; lateral leaflets obliquely ovate, 10-11 x 6-7 cm. Flowers are borne in 20-22-flowered racmes in leaf axils, flower-cluster-stalks slender, 15-21 cm long. Flowers are creamy to yellow. Sepal-cup bell-shaped, 2.5-3 mm long; tube 2-2.5 mm long; sepals fringed with hairs at margins. Standard is asymmetric, obliquely and transversely broadly elliptic, 6-8 x 11-13 mm, notched at tip; claw about 0.4 mm long; ear about 12 mm long; right wing petal concealing the upper portion of the keel petals; blade obliquely obovate, 8-10 x 5-7 mm; left wing petal is spreading; blade obliquely obovate to elliptic, 8-10 x 5-6 mm. Keel petals are spirally incurved to left; 1.8-2 cm long; horn-like pocket on the left keel petal 3.5-4.5 mm long. Pistil is 1.5-1.7 cm long, style thread-like, 1.1-1.2 cm long. Pods are linear, cylindrical, 6-6.5 x 0.4-0.5 cm, covered with 1.8-2 mm long brown hairs when young and turning brownish white or white when mature; seeds 10-15. Sahyadri Wild Bean is found in Maharashtra, Northern Western Ghats. Flowering: August-November.

Identification credit: Aakash Raut, Nitin Gore Photographed at Bavdhan, Pune.

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