Calopo

Calopogonium mucunoides, known as calopo or wild ground nut, is a twining herbaceous to weakly woody perennial legume in the Fabaceae native to the Neotropics from Mexico through Central America and across tropical South America. The plant produces long trailing or climbing densely hairy stems and pinnately trifoliate leaves with broadly ovate to rhomboid leaflets covered in stiff rust-colored hairs, especially when young. Small purplish-blue to lilac papilionaceous flowers are borne in short axillary racemes, followed by flat oblong densely hairy legumes 2 to 4 centimeters long containing several yellowish-brown seeds. The species has been introduced very widely throughout the tropics of Africa, Madagascar, the Indian Subcontinent, mainland and insular Asia, Malesia, Papuasia and northern Australia as a forage crop and green-manure cover crop, prized for its rapid ground cover and nitrogen fixation, although it has become a serious invasive species in some regions.