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Botanical Description

Procumbent perennial forming huddled clumps or broken mats from a branching central rootstock. Leaves 2-5cm long. Leaflets seven to nineteen, crowded, glaucous, folded, 5- 10mm long, obcordate to elliptic, retuse, greyish-woolly. Peduncles 1-2.5cm long bearing clustered racemes. Flowers six to fifteen, pallid violet to blue-purple, white-centred, about 8mm long, summer in the wild. More impressive are the tightly indated, rounded pods, 1.5-2.5cm in diameter, green papery in texture, but downy like a tiny peach and slightly rosy when ripe. Internally they have a narrow plate creating two chambers. Chile and Argentina in the central northern to central southern cordilleras in screes, stony barish slopes, sandy flats, river valleys and borders of alpine marshes at 2500-4000m.