Pueraria is a genus of 15–20 species of legumes native to south, east, and southeast Asia and to New Guinea and northern Australia. The genus is named after 19th century Swiss botanist Marc Nicolas Puerari.
Plants in the genus are lianas, shrubs, or climbing herbs, usually with large tuberous roots. Typical habitats include seasonally-dry tropical and subtropical forest, rain forest, forest margins, and scrub vegetation, often on limestone outcrops and in rocky areas. Current research, reproduced below, splits the genus into five clades, one of which defines the current monophyletic genus. In 2015, the authors validly published their proposal in Phytotaxa. , Kew Plants of the World Online database accepts these names.
- P. imbricata <small>Maesen</small>
- P. lacei <small>Craib</small>
- P. mirifica <small>Airy Shaw & Suvat.</small> (= P. candollei var. mirifica in Egan)
- P. montana <small>(Lour.) Merr.</small> – US invasive population comes from a hybrid of more than one of the subspecies.
- Pueraria montana var. chinensis <small>(Ohwi) Sanjappa & Pradeep</small> (= P. chinensis, although ILDS and the plant list instead consider P. thomsonii the synonym)
- Pueraria montana var. lobata <small>(Willd.) Sanjappa & Pradeep</small> (= P. lobata)
- Pueraria montana var. thomsonii <small>(Benth.) Wiersema ex D.B. Ward</small> (= P. thomsonii, missing in ILDS)
- P. pulcherrima <small>(Koord.) Koord.-Schum.</small>
- P. sikkimensis <small>Prain</small>
- P. tuberosa <small>(Roxb.ex Willd.) DC.</small> – type species → N. phaseoloides <small>(Roxb.) Benth.</small><p>P. edulis, P. montana, and N. phaseoloides make up what is known as kudzu. The morphological differences between these species are subtle.</p>
- N. phaseoloides var. javanicus (= P. javanica <small>(Benth.) Benth.</small>)
- N. phaseoloides var. phaseoloides
- N. phaseoloides var. subspicatus
- Teyleria
- P. stricta <small>Kurz</small> → T. stricta
- Toxicopueraria <small>A.N.Egan & B.Pan</small> – sister to Cologania
- P. peduncularis <small>Grah.</small> unaccepted name after Mount Omei.