Abrus Precatorius

Abrus precatorius is a slender, perennial climber that twines around trees, shrubs, and hedges. Leaves are glabrous with long internodes. It has a slender branch and a cylindrical wrinkled stem with a smooth-textured brown bark. Flowers are small and pale violet in colour with a short stalk, arranged in clusters. The fruit, which is a pod, is flat, oblong and truncate-shaped with a sharp deflexed beak is about 3 to 4.5 cm long, 1.2 cm wide, and silky-textured. Each fruit contains from 3 to 5 oval-shaped seeds, about 0.6 cm.They are usually bright scarlet in colour with a smooth, glossy texture, and a black patch on top.