These plants include climbing herb, creeping or irregular with a woody rhizome. Stem long, slender and easy to be bent with 0.5-3 m long, hairy or bald, sometimes somewhat erect stem. Leaves pinnate with 5-7 strands, elliptical, oval, oval-lanceolate or nearly rounded, bare upper leaf surface, while the lower surface hairy. Flowers in axillary, single or in pairs, white or greenish white often with a blue or blue all the basic areas are often middle or greenish yellow, hairy thick, the edges sometimes ciliated. Ribbon-shaped oval pod, bald or with a mixture of stick and long hair very short hair. Seeds numbered 8-10, long round, oval or oblong-kidney, olive green, light brown or dark reddish brown with dark stripes or almost dark.
Butterfly pea is a plant of lowland tropical moist and slightly moist, but tolerant of dry season in tropical regions (with 500-900 mm rainfall). This plant grows in grasslands, open woodland, scrub, river vegetation and disturbed places. Butterfly pea growth best in full sun. Annual rainfall needs to be able to survive may be as low as 400 mm, but requires about 1500 mm (or with additional irrigation) to get the best production. Height ranges between 0-1600 or to 1800 m with an average annual temperature of 19-28 ° C.
Butterfly pea has the ability to adapt to the vast land (pH 5.5-8.9), but like the fertile soil and will grow by less well on sandy land barren if not given fertilizer. This is one of a small pea with a good herb that can adapt themselves to high clay in moist areas of moderate to semi-arid tropics and grows in meadows with a blend of irrigation, but it can not survive with high flooding or drought.
This plant is rich with a variety of chemical constituents are already known, as: saponin, flafonoid, alkaloids, ca-oxalate and sulfur. The content of the leaf is kaempferol 3-glukoside, triterpenoids. While the flower is contained delphinidin3, 3 ', 5', triglucoside, and phenol. Butterfly pea roots somewhat toxic in doses of light.
All parts of plants can be used as an alternative treatment, but the first was dried by air. This plant efficacious as laxative, blood circulation (leaf), inflammation of the eye (flower), poisonous roots, meridian lung, kidney, and spleen.