Dalbergia frutescens

Dalbergia frutescens is a woody climbing liana, occasionally a scrambling shrub, in the Fabaceae family native to eastern South America, where it is distributed along the Atlantic coast and adjacent interior of Brazil and into parts of Paraguay, Uruguay and northeastern Argentina. It grows in semi-deciduous and Atlantic rainforest, restinga (coastal sandy forest), gallery forests and forest edges, climbing into the canopy by means of stout, woody, twining stems that can reach 10 to 20 metres in length. The bark is greyish-brown and lenticellate, and young branches are slender and finely pubescent. The alternate, pinnately compound leaves are 8 to 18 centimetres long with five to thirteen alternate leaflets; leaflets are ovate to elliptic, 2 to 5 centimetres long, glabrous and dark green above and slightly paler below, with entire margins and an obtuse to emarginate apex. Small, fragrant, pea-shaped flowers are borne in dense terminal and axillary panicles; the corolla is whitish to pale pink, 4 to 6 millimetres long, with a typical papilionoid arrangement. The fruit is a flattened, papery, indehiscent legume 3 to 7 centimetres long and about 1.5 centimetres wide, with a thickened seed-bearing portion and a broad winged margin, containing one or two flat brown seeds; the wing aids wind dispersal.