Tephrosia purpurea (L.) Pers.
Cracca purpurea L.
Eng.: Purple tephrosia. Ara.: Amedmed, omayeen, nafal, daan el-faar (last 3 in Egypt). Tamahaq: Isârsam, aesarsam, tenefi.
Subshrub, up to 1 m in height, hermaphrodite, erect. Stems woody, very ramose, ascending or prostrate, with ± herbaceous branching towards the end. Stems and older branches with brown-greenish bark, pubescent or glabrous. Young branchlets green, slender and generally very elongated, glabrescent. Leaves alternate, imparipinnate, with 7-11(15) leaflets, 10-25 × 7.3 mm, subsessile, subequal, entire, flat, narrowly obovate, with a rounded apex, mucronate, attenuated at the base, green and silky, with short applied hairs on both sides, but more abundant on the underside. Stipules 0.4-1.2 cm. Inflorescence in racemes with 3-10 flowers shortly pedicellate, borne in fascicles of 2-3 (sometimes very spaced apart from each other) or solitary on the axils of leaves. Calyx with 5 subequal teeth, ovate-lanceolate, very villous. Corolla 5-7 mm, papilionoid, reddish-purple, with silky-villous standard on the dorsal side, glabrous wings and keel. Pod 3-5 × 0.3-0.4 cm, linear-oblong, compressed, adpressed-hairy, with 6-10 seeds. Seeds 2.5-3 mm, subcylindrical, mottled.
Flowering:
February to May, although there may be flowers in other seasons.
Fruiting:
About 2 months after Flowering.
Sometimes the same plant can have flowers and mature pods at the same time.
Habitat:
Cleared forests, thickets, savannahs and deserts.
Distribution:
See the following paragraph.
Observations:
3 subspecies are recognised in North Africa. T. purpurea subsp. purpurea, with numerous flowers (6-20) arranged in dense racemes, leaves glabrous on the upper side and pubescent on the underside, calyx teeth longer than the tube, and pods clearly pubescent, from the southern Sahara. T. purpurea subsp. leptostachya (DC.) Brummitt (T. leptostachya DC) is a green-greyish or bluish shrub, often prostrate or creeping, with stems and leaves usually glabrous, with few small flowers (2-4, small and distant along terminal racemes), and leaves with 7-9 leaflets, very narrow; it is found in the central Sahara (below 1,500 m), towards the NE it reaches Egypt and towards the NW through the athantic Sahara it reaches the Sus Valley in Morocco. T. purpurea subsp. apollinea (Delile) Hosni & El Karemy (Galega apollinea Delile) is differentiated by its stems and pods with stiff hairs (which give it a unique roughness), as well as the leaves which are strigose on both sides, with 3-7 wide leaflets, silvery, silky on the underside; it is only known in Egypt and between Libya and Chad (in the Tibesti).
Conservation status:
A relatively common and widespread species, not considered threatened. Currently, it has not been assessed at a global level in the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species.