250 A FLORA OF MANILA 
39. SESBANIA Scopoli 
Erect, branched, suffrutescent herbs, shrubs, or trees. Leaves long, 
narrow, evenly pinnate, with numerous, oblong or linear-oblong, small, 
obtuse, mucronate leaflets. Flowers in few-flowered, axillary racemes, 
small to very large. Calyx campanulate, shallowly 2-lipped or 5-toothed. 
Corolla much exserted, white or yellow; petals long-clawed; standard broad; 
keel straight or recurved. Stamens diadelphous. Ovary linear, many- 
ovuled; style incurved. Pods very long and narrow, septate between the 
seeds, dehiscent, the seeds very numerous. (From the Arabic name of 
one species.) 
Species about 20 in all tropical countries, 3 in the Philippines. 
1. Trees with very large flowers 7 to 8 cm long, white or tinged with pink 
OF PCG 6 eS Ck oe ee ee eee 1. S. grandiflora 
1. Suffrutescent herbs or shrub-like; flowers small, yellow. 
2. Flowers about 1 cm long, with numerous purplish spots and dashes; 
pods erect, or spreading: s: 05,52 os ee 2. S. cannabina 
. Flowers about 1.5 cm long,.uniformly GaNewes pods pendulous. 
3. S. sesban 
1. S. GRANDIFLORA (L.) Pers. Caturay (Tag.); Gauay-gauay (Vis.). 
A glabrous tree 5 to 12 m high. Leaves 20 to 30 cm long. Leaflets 20 
to 40 pairs, oblong, obtuse, pale-green, 2.5 to 3.5 em long. Racemes short, 
axillary. Flowers few, very large, white, 7 to 9 cm long. Calyx green, 
subtruncate or very shallowly 2-lipped. Pods pendulous, linear, 20 to 60 
cm long, 7 to 8 mm wide, somewhat ioe many-seeded. (FI. Filip. 
pl. 291.) 
Not uncommon in cultivation and half-wild, fi. Oct.Apr.; throughout 
the Philippines in settled regions and certainly not indigenous, but of 
prehistoric introduction. India to Mauritius, Malaya, and Australia, often 
only cultivated. 
2. S. CANNABINA (Retz.) Pers. Balacbac (Tag.). 
A coarse, erect, branched, suffrutescent, annual herbaceous plant reaching 
a height of 3 m, with few, scattered, appressed hairs or nearly glabrous. 
Leaves 20 to 30 cm long, abruptly pinnate, the leaflets 30 to 40, narrowly 
oblong, obtuse or retuse, apiculate, 1 to 3 cm long, 3 to 5 mm wide. 
Racemes axillary, 3 to 5 cm long, elongated in fruit, 3- to 6-flowered. 
Flowers nearly 1.5 cm long, the calyx green, tinged with purple. Petals 
yellow, the standard with numerous dots and splashes of dark-purple on 
the back, retuse, reflexed, nearly 1.5 cm wide. Pods pendulous, straight 
or somewhat curved, 15 to 20 cm long, about 3 mm wide, sharply pointed, 
containing from 25 to 35 seeds. (FI. Filip. pl. 405, S. aegyptiaca.) 
In open, usually rather wet lands, scattered, fi. more or less throughout 
the year; widely distributed in the Philippines, surely introduced. India to 
the Malay Peninsula and Java. 
3. S. SESBAN (L.) Merr. (S. aegyptiaca Pers.). 
An erect, branched, stout, shrubby plant 2 to 3 m high, slightly ap- 
pressed-pubescent. Leaves 10 to 20 cm long; leaflets oblong, rounded, 
apiculate or mucronate, 2 to 3 cm long, 10 to 20 pairs. Racemes axillary, 
about 10 ecm long, few-flowered above the middle. Flowers uniformly 
yellow, not spotted with purple, slenderly pedicelled, about 1.5 cm long. 
