Compared to the seven other families that represent overall (predominantly arborescent) botanical diversity on Sundaland, the legumes contain a large proportion of herbs and lianas. As this might influence the capacity of legumes to predict overall botanical diversity, we indicated for each legume species their growth habit as tree, liana, herb or miscellaneous (everything else than the former). This allowed us to analyse the botanical diversity indicator status of legumes for ‘four’ different growth habits, both individually and combined.