Herbs, shrubs, or trees, of very various habit. Leaves usually alternate, stipulate, compound, rarely simple, sometimes wanting. Flowers generally irregular, hermaphrodite, occasionally regular and polygamous. Sepals 5, usually cohering into a more or less deeply divided calyx, sometimes free, often unequal, occasionally 2-lipped. Petals 5, seldom fewer, perigynous or rarely hypogynous, either papilionaceous or more or less regularly spreading. Stamens 10, rarely less or more, perigynous or almost hypogynous; filaments either free or all connate into a tube surrounding the ovary, or more generally 9 of them united and 1 free. Ovary free, 1-celled, consisting of a single carpel; style simple; ovules 1 to many, attached to the ventral suture. Fruit a pod splitting open along both sutures, rarely indehiscent or transversely breaking up into 1-seeded joints. Seeds nearly always exalbuminous; embryo with large foliaceous or amygdaloidal cotyledons and a short radicle.