PLANT : Perennial herbs or shrubs, aromatic when bruised.
STEMS : much-branched, unarmed, sparsely pubescent with straight or curly reddish hairs; glands sparse or absent.
LEAVES : alternate, deciduous, petiolate, odd-pinnate with 3-10 pairs of obovate to oblong-obovate or shallowly notched flat leaflets, glabrous to pubescent; stipules small, deciduous.
INFLORESCENCE : a terminal raceme or open panicle; bracts early deciduous.
FLOWERS : with showy bi-colored petals; calyx turbinate to campanulate, the tube 10-ribbed, bearing 2-5 yellow, orange, or red-brown glands between the ribs; calyx lobes shorter than the tube; petal wings and keel elevated on a column continuous with the staminal tube; stamens generally 10, the filaments fused; ovary 1-ovuled.
FRUIT : a 1-seeded pod, ovoid, exserted from the calyx, conspicuously red gland-dotted, beaked by a persistent style.
NOTES : 38 spp.; sw U.S. (CA, NM, NV), Mex., C. Amer. (In honor of Marina or Melinche, interpreter for Cortés during the conquest of Mexico). Barneby, Rupert C. 1977. Mem. New York Bot. Gard. 27:55-135.
REFERENCES: Rhodes, Suzanne, June Beasley and Tina Ayers. 2011. Fabaceae. CANOTIA 7: 1-13.
