CLASS DECANDRIA. 101 



Pea, but as the stamens are all separate, it finds place 

 in the simple class Decandria, instead of that of 

 Diadelphia, which plants only differ from the present 

 in the union of the filaments into 2 unequal bodies. It 

 would, perhaps, have been better, at least where 

 natural classification is at all concerned, to have 

 merged the mere character of an union of filaments, 

 and classed such plants rather by the number and 

 disposition or insertion of their stamens, by which 

 means, in this, and other cases, the artificial and natural 

 methods might have been more happily and conve- 

 niently combined. Thus mere sections of the same 

 natural order Papilionace2E would not need to be 

 sought for in 2 remote classes. 



In the Baptisia, or Wild Indigo, the calyx is bila- 

 biate, with the border 4 or 5-cleft. The corolla 

 papilionaceous, or irregular in its proportions, the 

 petals nearly equal in length ; the vexillum having its 

 sides reflected ; and the flower, according to the spe- 

 cies, yellow, white, or rarely blue, and not much un- 

 like that of the Lupin. The stamina are deciduous, 

 in consequence of not being combined together. The 

 legume ventricose and pedicellate, containing many 

 smallish seeds. They are all perennial plants, chiefly 

 of the southern and western states, with long tap roots, 

 and low forked branches clothed with ternate leaves. 

 The flowers are generally in terminal racemes. Our 

 commonest species, growing in sandy woods, and 

 flowering from July to September, is very much 

 branched, with small, smooth, ternated, subsessile 

 leaves, bearing terminal racemes, each containing a 

 few yellow flowers, with the legume or pod pedicel- 

 lated. This is called Baptisia tinctoria, in conse- 

 quence of its having been once employed as a sub- 

 stitute for Indigo. The B. ceerulea, which grows 

 occasionally on the sandy and gravelly shores of the 

 9* 



