Corolla colour in chickpea (Cicer arietinum L.) is white or various shades of pink or blue (Smithson, Thompson & Summerfield, 1985). Normally, a leaf axil subtends a single peduncle bearing a single flower but ‘double-flowered’ types, where a pro-portion of the peduncles subtends two flowers, are not uncommon and produce 6–11 % more seed yield than the normal single-flowered type (Sheldrake, Saxena & Krishnamurthy, 1978)