A comparison among 37 specimens representative of Swartzieae, Sophoreae, Tephorosieae, Indigofereae, Psoraleeae, Desmodieae and Phaseoleae has been performed on the ground of biochemical and morphological characters. In particular the serological cross reactions of the seed proteins were tested by immunodiffusion, and more than one hundred characters were surveyed about vegetative and reproductive features. The two distinct sets of data have been processed by cluster analysis and two different sets of phenetical groupings have been obtained, which also differ from the groups of traditional taxonomy. Since the naturalness of the tribes considered is not something undoubtable, the pointed out incongruences may be due to areai lack of homogeneity in these traditional taxa.