Purple tephrosia

Tephrosia purpurea, commonly known as purple tephrosia, wild indigo or in Sanskrit Sharapunkha, is a much-branched perennial or sometimes annual herb to small subshrub of the family Fabaceae, widely distributed across the tropical and subtropical Old World from Africa through the Indian subcontinent to South-East Asia, Australia and many Pacific islands, and naturalised elsewhere as a weed of waste ground, fallow fields and sandy soils. The plant grows 30 to 90 centimetres tall, with slender, finely ridged, appressed-pubescent stems arising from a stout woody taproot. The alternate, shortly petiolate leaves are imparipinnate with 9 to 21 narrowly oblanceolate to oblong leaflets 10 to 25 millimetres long, each silky-pubescent beneath. Small papilionate flowers about 6 to 8 millimetres long, pink to purple or occasionally white, are borne in slender leaf-opposed or terminal racemes throughout much of the year. The fruit is a narrow, somewhat curved, finely pubescent linear pod 3 to 5 centimetres long containing 5 to 10 small, mottled, oblong seeds.