Mucuna pruriens is a tropical legume native to Africa and tropical Asia and widely naturalized and cultivated. Its English common names include monkey tamarind, velvet bean, Bengal velvet bean, Florida velvet bean, Mauritius velvet bean, Yokohama velvet bean, cowage, cowitch, lacuna bean, and Lyon bean. The plant is notorious for the extreme itchiness it produces on contact, particularly with the young foliage and the seed pods. It also produces many medium-sized red swollen bumps along with the itching. It has agricultural and horticultural value and is used in herbalism. Description Mucuna pruriens is an annual climbing shrub with long vines that can reach over in length. When the plant is young, it is almost completely covered with fuzzy hairs, but when older, it is almost completely free of hairs. The leaves are tripinnate, ovate, reverse ovate, rhombus-shaped or widely ovate. The sides of the leaves are often heavily grooved and the tips are pointy. In young specimens, both sides of the leaves have hairs. The stems of the leaflets are long. Additional adjacent leaves are present and are about long. The flower heads take the form of axially arrayed panicles. They are long and have two or three, or many flowers, which can be white, lavender, or purple. The accompanying leaves are about long; the flower stand axes are from . The bell is long and silky. The sepals are longer or of the same length as the shuttles. The crown is purplish or white. The flag is long. The wings are long. In the fruit-ripening stage, a long, wide, unwinged, leguminous fruit develops. There is a ridge along its length and the husk is covered in loose, orange hairs that cause a severe itch if they contact skin. The pods carry up to seven seeds, which are shiny black or brown drift seeds. They are flattened uniform ellipsoids, long, wide and thick. The hilum, the base of the funiculus (connection between placenta and plant seeds) is a surrounded by a significant arillus (fleshy seed shell). The dry weight of the seeds is /100 seeds. Chemistry The seeds of the plant contain about 3.1–6.1% . M. pruriens var. pruriens has the highest content of . An average of 52.11% degradation of into damaging quinones and reactive oxygen species was found in seeds of M. pruriens varieties. Taxonomy Subspecies Mucuna pruriens ssp. deeringiana (Bort) Hanelt Mucuna pruriens ssp. pruriens Varieties Mucuna