Citation: L., Sp. Pl. 753 (1753).

Derivation: Greek glykys, sweet.

Synonymy: Not Applicable

Common name: None

Description:
Perennial herbs; stems slender, climbing or procumbent, occasionally woody at the base, pubescent; hairs more or less appressed, usually retrorse on the stems peduncles and petioles and antrorse on the leaflets; leaflets 3, rarely 5 or 7; stipules and stipels small.

Flowers small, few to several in pedunculate solitary racemes, fascicled, loose or clustered in the upper axils, rarely inserted singly; bracts inserted at the base of each pedicel, caducous; bracteoles at the base of the calyx small, membranous and caducous; calyx tapering to the base, 5-toothed, the upper 2 partly connate, the lower 3 lanceolate to setaceous; petals exceeding the calyx to twice its length, long-clawed, glabrous, deep-blue to purple-pink rarely white; standard suborbicular to obovate-rhomboid, subauriculate at the base; wings narrow-obovate, more or less adherent to the shorter obtuse keel; stamens all fertile, usually diadelphous by the freeing of the upper stamen with age; ovary cylindrical, with several ovules; style short, slender, slightly incurred, glabrous; stigma terminal, capitate.

Pod linear or oblong, straight or falcate, in young stages often undulate, obliquely constricted at maturity, with pithy partitions between the seeds, more or less compressed, 3-8-seeded; seeds ovoid or oblong to subspherical, quadrate, with a short hilum and scale-like aril.

Distribution:  10 or more species in warmer parts of Africa and Asia, 6 in Australia and 5 of them endemic. (F. J. Hermann (1962) Tech. Bull. U.S. Dept Agric. 1268:9-24.) Glycines.

Biology: No text

Taxonomic notes: G. falcata Benth., with leaves digitately 3-foliolate and falcate pods, was recorded by Bentham (1864), Fl. Aust. 2:243, from Cooper Creek; also G. tabacina (Labill.)Benth. and G. tomentella Hayata (=G. tomentosa Benth.), both with leaves pinnately 3-foliolate, were recorded in J. Black (1948), FI.S. Aust. 479, and H. Eichler (1965), Suppl. 194, but I have seen no supporting specimens.

Key to Species:

1. Leaves digltately 3-foliolate, the 3 leaflets equally petitolulate, subsessile
2. Stems elongate, twining; seed c. 1.5 mm long	G. clandestina 2.
2. Stems short, erect, decumbent or ascending, not twining; seed c. 3mm long	G. latrobeana 3.
1. Leaves pinnately trifoliolate, the terminal leaflet inserted on a short petiolule at some distance from the lateral subsessile leaflets
3. Plant hoary; leaflets canescent, silky-strigose, linear to narrowly oblong-lanceolate, acute, 20-60 mm long	G. canescens 1.
3. Plant not hoary; leaflets strigose to glabrous; the lower usually broadly obovate to elliptic, obtuse to truncate, 10-15 mm long	G. tabacina 4.

Author: Not yet available