The soy plant is an annual, bristly hairy plant that grows up to 80 cm high. The flowers are purple or white, the fruit short, brown-yellow pods with 2 to 3 roundish-oval white, yellow or brown seeds. These soybean seeds contain a fatty oil.
The refined, fatty oil(Soiae oleum raffinatum) which is pressed from the soya seeds is used phytotherapeutically, as is the resulting soya lecithin(Soya le cithin - Lecithinum ex soja).