Climbers, woody, or scandent shrubs, large, usually unarmed. Leaves bipinnate; stipules small, setaceous; petiolar gland absent; terminal pair of pinnae sometimes transformed into a tendril; leaflets opposite, 1 to many pairs. Spikes axillary or supra-axillary, slender, solitary or arranged in a racemelike panicle. Flowers bisexual or polygamous, 5-merous, sessile. Calyx campanulate, shortly dentate. Petals free or slightly united at base. Stamens 10, shortly connate at base and adnate to petals, much exserted; anthers with a deciduous gland at apex; filaments filiform. Ovary subsessile; ovules numerous; style filiform; stigma minute. Legume straight or curved to spirally twisted, plano-compressed, large and long, leathery or woody; valves splitting transversely at maturity into 1-seeded segments; segments falling away from suture, which persists as an empty frame. Seeds globose to orbicular, large; testa brown, thick, without pleurogram (in Asia).

Also see Ohashi, H., T. C. Huang & K. Ohashi. 2010. Entada (Leguminosae subfam. Mimosoideae) of Taiwan. Taiwania 55(1): 43-53.

About 30 species: mainly in tropical Africa and the Americas; three species in China.