Relatives

Glycine soja Siebold & Zucc. - Wild Soya, Wild Soybean.

Taxonomic position.

Family Fabaceae Lindl., genus Glycine Willd.

Main synonyms:

Glycine gracilis Skvorts., G.max (L.) Merr. subsp. soja (Siebold & Zucc.) Ohashi, G.soja var. gracilis (Skvorts.) L.Z.Wang, G.ussuriensis Regel & Maack

MOrphology and biology.

Annual herbaceous liana 0.5-1.5(2) m tall with slender weak, twining, branched stems. Stems covered with sparse, rigid, deflexed hairs. Leaves compound, ternate, varying in shape and size of leaflets even within one plant. Leaflets oval-lanceolate or elliptic to narrow, sublinear, 4-6 cm long and about 2 cm wide. Young leaflets and petioles densely covered with adpressed hairs. Flowers small, 5-7 mm long, in axillary racemes of 3-8(15) flowers. Calyx 3-4 mm long, green or red-violet, densely pubescent with adpressed rigid rufous hairs. Standard violet, wings lighter, nearly white, keel pale violet. Pods rather small, flat, 0.7-2.5 cm long and 4-5 mm wide, dark brown, 1-5-seeded, at maturity dehiscing along ventral and dorsal sutures. Valves covered with rigid hairs, twisting at pod dehiscence. Seeds dark, nearly black, slightly spotty, dull, with greyish bloom. Hilum elongate, black. Flowers in July, fruits in September. Entomophilous. Zoochore. 2n=38(40).

Distribution.

General distribution: Japan, Korea, China. Former USSR - Far East (Zeya-Bureya and Ussuri districts).

Ecology.

River and lake banks, shrubberies, boggy meadows.

Use and economic value.

Wild relative of cultivated soybean. High protein forage (grain, green mass, hay, silage, oilcake); green manure (forms great amount of nitrogen-containing nodules on roots).

References:

Wulf VV., Maleyeva OF. 1969. The world resources of useful plants (food, forage, technical, medicine etc.). Reference book. Leningrad: Nauka. P.234. (In Russian).
Wulf EV., ed. 1957. Cultivated flora of the USSR. V.4. Crop legumes. Leningrad. P.378-380. (In Russian).
Kharkevich SS., ed. 1989. Vascular plants of the Soviet Far East. V.4. Leningrad: Nauka. P.207-208. (In Russian).
Shishkin BK., Bobrov EG., ed. 1948. Flora URSS. V.13. P.528-529. (In Russian).
Cherepanov SK. 1995. Vascular plants of Russia and adjacent states (the former USSR). St.Petersburg. 990 p. (In Russian).

© T.N.Smekalova