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  1. Family: Fabaceae Lindl.

    1. Pueraria DC.

        2. This genus is accepted, and is native to Asia-Tropical, Pacific, Panamá, Northern Territory and Asia-Temperate..

    [FTEA]

    Leguminosae, J. B. Gillett, R. M. Polhill & B. Verdcourt. Flora of Tropical East Africa. 1971

    Habit
    Robust climbers or trailers, the roots sometimes tuberous
    Leaves
    Leaves large, pinnately 3-foliolate, the leaflets entire or sinuately lobed; stipules present, sometimes produced below the point of insertion; stipels present
    Inflorescences
    Inflorescences axillary, falsely racemose or paniculate, sometimes very long, the flowers often aggregated on nodose reduced side branches along the rhachis; bracts present, mostly small and soon falling; bracteoles present, sub-persistent or deciduous
    Calyx
    Calyx 5-lobed or appearing 4-lobed, the upper pair of lobes joined to form an entire or bifid lip
    Corolla
    Corolla small or medium-sized, mostly blue or purplish; standard rounded, with basal and mostly very marked inflexed auricles, but without appendages
    Stamens
    Vexillary filament usually joined to the tube but sometimes free; anthers uniform
    Pistil
    Ovary linear, many-ovuled, narrowed above; style curved, scarcely stiffened, widest at the base just above the narrowing of the ovary, gradually becoming filiform towards the apex; stigma terminal, minute, capitate, sometimes with some minute hairs
    Fruits
    Pods long and linear, compressed, many-seeded, pubescent
    Seeds
    Seeds small, oblong, subglobose or almost cylindrical, oftenminutely shagreened; hilum small, central, oblong-elliptic; rim-aril absent, but a small cartilaginous remnant of the funicle often present.
    [LOWO]

    Legumes of the World. Edited by G. Lewis, B. Schrire, B. MacKinder & M. Lock. Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew. (2005)

    Vernacular
    kudzu vine
    Habit
    Lianas, shrubs or climbing herbs, usually with large tuberous roots
    Ecology
    Seasonally dry tropical and subtropical forest, rain forest, forest margins and scrub vegetation, often on open limestone and in rocky areas
    Distribution
    Asia (lowland to montane Indian subcontinent, Indo-China, SW China, Malesia, Papuasia, Pacific); the Kudzu vine (P. montana (Lour.) Merr. var. lobata (Willd.) Maesen & S.M.Almeida) widespread to temperate E Asia, Australia and introduced into Africa and SE USA; tropical Kudzu (P. phaseoloides (Roxb.) Benth.) is widely introduced in Africa and the Neotropics
    Note
    Placed in subtribe Glycininae; Lee & Hymowitz (2001) show Pueraria to be polyphyletic, with species of the non-typical sections Breviramulae and Schizophyllon being basally branching to those of the typical section Pueraria; Doyle et al. (2003) resolve a Pueraria-Pseudovigna clade sister to an Amphicarpaea-Glycine clade, with Dumasia being sister to both these clades

    Previous accounts of the Phaseoleae by Baudet (1978) and Lackey (1981) recognised 90 and 84 genera and c. 1540 and 1480 species respectively in the tribe. In an equivalent, i.e. traditionally held view of Phaseoleae, 89 genera and (1554)–1567–(1580) species are treated here (Table 9; Fig. 47). Changes between Baudet (1978) and this treatment are that eleven genera are now in synonymy or have subsequently been placed in Millettieae, two genera have been transferred from Desmodieae and eight new genera have been added. Vigna has traditionally been thought to comprise some 150–200 species, but Vigna sens. strict. may contain fewer than 100.

    Recent molecular analyses of the tribe, however, have emphasised both the polyphyletic and paraphyletic nature of Phaseoleae as traditionally circumscribed (Bruneau & Doyle, 1990; Doyle & Doyle, 1993; Delgado Salinas et al., 1993; Bruneau et al., 1995; Doyle et al., 1997, 2000; Kajita et al., 2001; Goel et al., 2001; Lee & Hymowitz, 2001). This has required a radical realignment of elements of the phaseoloids (Table 9; Fig. 47), with at least two major clades being evident: Phaseoleae subtribes Diocleinae and Ophrestiinae which together with tribe Abreae are allied to the core-Millettieae (Fig. 45), and the remaining groups comprising a Phaseoleae sens. lat. clade. The rbcL phylogeny of Kajita et al. (2001) and the ITS analysis of Hu et al. (2002) are equivocal as to which clade subtribe Clitoriinae belongs. Phaseoleae sens. lat. also includes two traditionally independent tribes, the Desmodieae and Psoraleeae. Delimiting a recircumscribed Phaseoleae sens. strict is thus very problematic. A solution may be to recognise a broad tribe Phaseoleae, comprising the subtribes Kennediinae, Cajaninae, Phaseolinae and Glycininae, assorted basally branching genera, and tribes Desmodieae and Psoraleeae (both treated at subtribal level).

    [LOWO]
    Use
    Used as pasture, fodder and cover crops, green manure, human food (tubers), thickening agent (starch from tubers), cordage (fibre); Kudzu vine is often an invasive weed

    Images

    Distribution

    Native to:

    Andaman Is., Assam, Bangladesh, Bismarck Archipelago, Caroline Is., China North-Central, China South-Central, China Southeast, East Himalaya, Hainan, India, Inner Mongolia, Japan, Jawa, Korea, Laos, Malaya, Maluku, Manchuria, Myanmar, Nansei-shoto, Nepal, New Caledonia, New Guinea, Northern Territory, Ogasawara-shoto, Pakistan, Panamá, Philippines, Primorye, Solomon Is., Sulawesi, Taiwan, Thailand, Tibet, Vanuatu, Vietnam, West Himalaya

    Introduced into:

    Alabama, Angola, Argentina Northeast, Arkansas, Bermuda, Burundi, Cameroon, Central African Repu, Dominican Republic, Ethiopia, Fiji, Florida, Gabon, Georgia, Ghana, Gilbert Is., Hawaii, Honduras, Illinois, Kansas, Kentucky, Krym, Liberia, Louisiana, Maine, Masachusettes, Mississippi, Mozambique, New Jersey, New South Wales, New York, Nigeria, Niue, Norfolk Is., North Carolina, Northern Provinces, Nova Scotia, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, Queensland, Samoa, Senegal, Sierra Leone, South Carolina, Sudan, Tadzhikistan, Tennessee, Texas, Tonga, Transcaucasus, Ukraine, Virginia, Wallis-Futuna Is., Zaïre

    Pueraria DC. appears in other Kew resources:

    First published in Ann. Sci. Nat. (Paris) 4: 97 (1825)

    Literature

    Flora of West Tropical Africa
    • in Ann. Sci. Nat., ser. 1, 4: 97 (1825).
    Flora of Tropical East Africa
    • in Ann. Sci. Nat. 4: 97 (1825)

    Sources

    Flora of Tropical East Africa
    Flora of Tropical East Africa
    http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0

    Kew Backbone Distributions
    The International Plant Names Index and World Checklist of Selected Plant Families 2018. Published on the Internet at http://www.ipni.org and http://apps.kew.org/wcsp/
    © Copyright 2017 World Checklist of Selected Plant Families. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0

    Kew Names and Taxonomic Backbone
    The International Plant Names Index and World Checklist of Selected Plant Families 2018. Published on the Internet at http://www.ipni.org and http://apps.kew.org/wcsp/
    © Copyright 2017 International Plant Names Index and World Checklist of Selected Plant Families. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0

    Legumes of the World Online
    http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0