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Family: Fabaceae
White-Bark Wild Sensitive-Plant
[Cassia fruticosa Mill.] |
Shrub or small tree, mostly to 5 m tall (occasionally to 10 m), puberulent all over, especially on lower leaflet surface. Leaves paripinnate; stipules linear, caducous; petioles 2-4 cm long; rachis 1-4 cm long, bearing stipule-like, subconic gland between pairs of leaflets, the terminal gland often missing; petiolules to 6 mm long, stout; leaflets 4, elliptic, sometimes inequilateral, acuminate, obtuse to rounded at base, 6-24 cm long, 2-9 cm wide; juvenile blades often pruinose beneath. Inflorescences terminal or subterminal, paniculate to racemose; bracts brown, subulate, ca 3 mm long, caducous; pedicels to 4 cm long; calyx with a disklike base, the sepals rounded, imbricate, ca 12 mm long; petals 5, mostly obovate-suborbicular, 2.5-3 cm long, with a slender claw at base ca 1 mm long, yellow to orange-yellow, spreading at anthesis; stamens 10, the 3 uppermost aborted, minute, the 4 fertile stamens curved, the 3 fertile stamens nearest the style curved to sigmoid, often with the pores reduced to 1 at apex; anthers ca 7 mm long, with 2 apical pores; style densely pubescent, emerging from one side of flower and broadly curved; stigma deeply cupular, held above the anthers. Legumes linear-cylindrical, straight or slightly curved, 20-30 cm long, ca 1 cm diem at maturity, splitting dorsally; seeds 60-80, transverse, black. Croat 6012, Hladik 234. Sparse in the forest, along the lakeshore, and at the edges of clearings; elsewhere often common. Flowers and fruits apparently throughout the year, especially in the dry season and in the middle of the rainy season, from August to September, with little flowering activity at the beginning of the rainy season. Fruit maturity time not determined. Leaves are replaced in the dry season. |