 As the picture at the right shows, Kudzu flowers appear
in spike-like clusters (they're racemes), and flowering begins at the bottom of
the inflorescence. The Kudzu vine's compound leaves are divided into threes, like a
clover's, but they are much larger. The ones in the picture are about a foot across. A
single Kudzu flower is up to ¾-inch long.
The picture at the right shows another distinguishing feature: The Kudzu flower's sepals are especially long. In the picture you can see three rather long, narrow, pale-purple sepals arising at the corolla's base, which is at the picture's top, left corner. The pale, small teardrop thing at the calyx's base is a bract (a much-reduced leaf) and thus not really part of the flower.
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The close-up at the left shows two flowers. Notice that each
Kudzu flower has the typical papilionaceous configuration described on our 
As the picture above shows, one feature
distinguishing Kudzu flowers from the blossoms of "average" Bean Family members
is that the flower's keel -- the two bottom petals grown together to form
a scoop-like pouch -- is strongly up-curved at the end, and holds the pistil and stamens
inside it very tightly. Compared to the broadly flaring standard, the keel is narrow and
smallish. 
In the photo at the left I've removed one wing and one side of the keel to
show how the filaments of the flower's ten stamens grow together to form
a cylinder around the female pistil, but one stamen grows apart. This is typical in the
Bean Family. When stamen filaments grow in this manner they are said to be diadelphous.
I don't know why so many Bean Family flowers do this strange thing, they just do...
Of course, the yellow, powdery stuff at the top left in the picture is pollen being
released from mature anthers.