Q.Describe the salient vegetative and floral characters of family Leguminosae, giving its floral formula and its economic importance.

Family Leguminosae (also called Fabaceae) ranges from small herbs to large trees, and is easily recognised vegetatively by its typically compound leaves (pinnately or palmately) with a swollen pulvinate base at the petiole, and by root nodules on many of its members. Leaves show reticulate venation, and stipules are commonly present.

The flower is zygomorphic and bisexual, borne usually in a raceme. The calyx has five sepals fused together (gamosepalous), sometimes bilipped. The corolla is the family's most distinctive feature -- five petals of unequal size and shape, arranged in the characteristic papilionaceous (butterfly-like) form: the largest, posterior petal (the 'standard' or vexillum) is outermost, overlapping two lateral 'wing' petals, which in turn overlap two smaller anterior petals fused along their lower margin into a boat-shaped 'keel' enclosing the stamens and style -- this specific overlap pattern is called vexillary aestivation. The androecium usually has ten stamens, nine of them united by their filaments into a tube while one remains free -- a diadelphous condition -- which allows the free filament to separate slightly, letting a self-pollinating mechanism or pollinator access work. The gynoecium is formed of a single carpel (monocarpellary) that is folded upon itself, so that ovules develop in two rows along its ventral suture -- marginal placentation -- and it matures into the family's namesake fruit, a legume or pod, which splits along both sutures to release its seeds. …

Lead with the vegetative clue (compound leaf + pulvinus + nodules), then describe the papilionaceous corolla and diadelphous androecium in enough detail to explain WHY the fruit is a legume, and close economic im …

• Describing the corolla as simply 'zygomorphic' without naming its three distinct petal types (standard, wings, keel) and the vexillary overlap between them. …