Perennial; plants low, tufted, stemless or with short stem (0-4(6) cm long), stems prostrate; herbage usually silvery; foliage densely strigose with rather coarse straight and parallel, appressed, dolabriform hairs; stipules not connate; leaves 2-6.5 cm long; leaflets 7-15, obovate to oval, 2-8(11) mm long; flower stalks slender, wiry, often long-persistent, 3-6.5 cm long, prostrate in fruit; inflorescence (3)5-14-flowered, axis little elongating in fruit; calyx 4.5-5 mm long, with mixed black and white or sometimes all white hairs; flowers pea-like; petals ochroleucous with indistinct lilac veins, or banner and wings distally tinged with dull lilac, longest petals (wings) 7.5-9 mm long; banner abruptly recurved 90-100, 7-8.3 mm long; pod spreading or ascending, long-persistent, plumply ovoid or oblong-ellipsoid, straight, 9-18 mm long, 4-7(8) mm in diameter, rounded at base, abruptly contracted at tip into a stout cusp, exterior fleshy, green, smooth, strigulose, becoming leathery, brown or black, roughly netlike, either no septum or a rudimentary one up to 1.2 mm wide, dehiscing apically and ultimately through the length of the ventral (adaxial or upper) suture, the tips curling backward and gaping to release the seeds. Flowers (March) May through June (August).