Uraria Desv. and Christia Moench are two closely related genera in Fabaceae and are of high medicinal and ornamental value. To examine the pollen variability and evaluate its taxonomic significance, the pollen morphology of 18 samples representing six species in Uraria and three species in Christia was investigated using scanning electron microscopy (SEM), and both qualitative and quantitative palynological features were examined. The pollen grains were measured, described, and electron photomicrographs were taken. The pollen grains of nine species have tricolpate apertures. Three types of pollen shapes, that is, spheroidal, prolate, and perprolate were observed, where the perprolate pollen grains were predominant. The exine ornamentation of pollen grains is reticulate or rugulate. A high level of interspecific and intraspecific variation in the shapes of pollen grains in Uraria and Christia was observed. The principal component analysis (PCA) revealed that the first two principal components accounted for 79.43 % of the total variance, where P/E, pore shape, exine ornamentation, and pore size are valuable taxonomic characters in these two genera. Our results suggested that it was challenging to use pollen morphology as taxonomic features at interspecific or intraspecific taxonomic levels, but palynological assessments could provide valuable evidence to understand the origin and evolutionary process of plants at the taxonomic levels of genus or family.