港油麻藤 gang you ma teng

Tall climbing vines, to 10 m. Young stems with dense reddish crisped hairs, old stems almost glabrous. Leaves up to 15.5 cm; petiole ca. 6.5 cm, glabrous or sparsely hairy; stipels 1-2 mm; leaflets papery, adaxially clothed with sparse golden silky hairs, abaxially with dense reddish hairs on veins and golden silky hairs on surface, golden hairs becoming sparse on older leaves, lateral veins (4 or)5 or 6 pairs, slightly curved; terminal leaflet broadly ovate to rhombic-ovate, 5-9 × 3.5-5.5 cm, base broadly cuneate or rounded, apex shortly acuminate; lateral leaflets 6.5-7 × 3-5 cm, with width ratio of abaxial to adaxial halves 3:2, base rounded or slightly cordate. Inflores­cences on old stems, ca. 8 cm, with up to 7 nodes; bracts and bracteoles very soon caducous; pedicels 3-4 mm, densely red­dish hairy. Calyx densely softly hairy and with irritant bristles; tube 7-8 × ca. 10 mm; lateral lobes ca. 2 mm, lowest lobe broadly triangular, ca. 4 mm, upper lip as long as lateral lobes. Corolla purple; standard ca. 2.5 cm; wings ca. 4 cm × 6-8 mm; keel 4-4.2 cm. Legume asymmetric, narrowly oblong, 15-16.5 × ca. 4.5 cm, leathery, with acute apex and persistent style, when young with dense bristles gradually caducous after matur­ity; both margins with a pair of wings ca. 1 cm wide, both sur­faces with 12-15 well-spaced obliquely transverse thinly tex­tured winglike lamellae 3-4 mm high, mostly not interrupted nor branched, some extending onto marginal wings of fruit. Seeds reddish brown, oblong, ca. 2.5 × 2 cm, ca. 7 mm thick; hilum black, length ca. 1/2 circumference of seed. Fl. Aug.

● Among trees or shrubs in evergreen forests at low elevations. Hong Kong.

Mucuna championii is known only from the type collection and is possibly now extinct. All other records of this species are based on misidentifications of M. hainanensis. Mucuna championii is distinctive in its conspicuous soft red-brown indumentum and rather narrowly ob­long fruit with oblique simple lamellae that extend to the outer edge of the marginal wings.