Roxb.
Description
Flemingia procumbens is a prostrate, sub-Himalayan legume distributed from the western Himalaya eastward through Nepal into southern China, with scattered records reaching Laos and New Guinea. GBIF documents some 61 occurrences across India, China, Nepal, Laos and Papua New Guinea, reflecting a discontinuous range spanning warm-temperate montane slopes and submontane grasslands. The species favours open, sunny banks, terraced field margins, dry hill grasslands and stony, well-drained soils, typically flowering in late summer and early autumn. The material illustrated here was gathered in India at Garhwal, Simkarok, at about 2600 m in September, an elevation characteristic of its mid-altitude preference along the outer Himalayan ranges.
The plant is a low perennial herb or subshrub with trailing to decumbent, often somewhat woody stems arising from a stout rootstock, the younger branches finely pubescent. The leaves are pinnately trifoliolate with prominent stipules, the leaflets elliptic to obovate, entire-margined and glandular-punctate beneath, borne on short petiolules. Small papilionaceous flowers, pink to purplish, are aggregated in dense axillary or terminal racemes subtended by bracts; the calyx is deeply lobed and the standard petal exceeds the wings and keel. The fruit is a small, turgid, two-seeded pod which dehisces explosively at maturity, releasing minute, smooth seeds.
Flemingia is a genus of the tribe Phaseoleae closely allied to Moghania and frequently subsumed within or segregated from it by various authors; the gland-dotted foliage and inflated pods are diagnostic of the group. Several species yield the orange resinous dye and dusting powder known as waras, harvested from glandular hairs of the inflorescences. F. procumbens has no recognised conservation concern given its broad if sparse distribution, though montane grassland habitats face pressure from grazing and land conversion.
Author: Roxb. · Sources: POWO (Kew), GBIF, Flora of China, Flora of British India, The Legumes of the Indian Subcontinent, A Revision of the Genus Flemingia (Leguminosae-Papilionoideae)