Perennial twining or climbing herbs or subshrubs. Leaves pinnately 3-foliolate; stipules and stipels deciduous or persistent; leaf­lets sessile or shortly petiolulate. Raceme axillary; flowers small, paired, clustered, or sparsely arranged; bracts and bracteoles 2, small, acute, persistent. Calyx campanulate; lobes shorter than tube, unequal, upper 2 connate. Corolla usually purple, light purple, or red, longer than calyx, 7-8 mm in diam.; standard ovate or broadly ovate, almost erect, without auricles, longer than other petals; wings narrow, oblique, with auricles, longer than keels and connate with them; keels straight and with blunt auricles and stipe. Sta­mens diadelphous; anthers small, uniform. Ovary subsessile or shortly stipitate; style inflexed, filiform, glabrous; stigma terminal, capitate. Legume linear, compressed, slightly curved, 4-5 cm, shortly stipitate or sessile, 4-11-ovuled, septate. Seeds suborbicular, oblong, or reniform; hilum short, without strophiole.

Shuteria suffulta Wallich ex Bentham, native to India, Myanmar, and Thailand, has been recorded from Yunnan (Index Fl. Yunnan. 1984), but we have not seen any material.

About six species: tropics and subtropics of Asia; four species (one endemic) in China.

(Authors: Sa Ren (萨仁); Michael G. Gilbert)