THE GENUS CHAMJECRISTA. 941 
slender-conieal and acuminate (always subglobose or ovoid 
and obtuse in Cassia.) (8.) Sepals plane, slenderly acumi- 
nate, thin-membranous (in Cassia firm-herbaceous, obtuse, 
concavo-convex). (4.) Flower on a twisted pedicel, its ban- 
ner and keel petals thus made to appear lateral, and one 
wing enlarged and placed lowermost, the other reduced 
and becoming uppermost. (5.) Pods thin, compressed, very 
promptly dehiscent, never subterete and indehiscent as in 
most or all Cassias. 
The genus was founded by Johann Commelin just two 
centuries ago (1697), on a West Indian plant, this same be- 
ing the type of Cassia Chameerista, Linn. Linnæus sup- 
pressed the genus. Mcench restored it in 1694, and seems 
to have insisted on the large size of the lower petal (the left- 
hand wing petal) as the most essential character; so that he 
certainly observed the structure of the corolla to be widely 
at variance with that of Cassia. Inthe course of the present 
century a number of authors seem to have maintained it; 
but in so far as I have been able to read the history, the 
real, and superlatively numerous, characters of the genus are 
here for the first time clearly indicated. 
I do not attempt to transfer to CHAMHCRISTA any more 
than a small proportion of the species which belong to it. 
* Large-flowered species, all the petals spreading, only moderately 
unequal.—CHAMJECRISTA proper. 
1. C. pavonis, Cass. Dict. viii, 78 (1817). Cassia Chame- 
crista, Linn., not of recent American authors. Chamecrista 
pavonis major, Commelin, Hort. Amst. i. 53, t. 37 (1697). 
Plant indigenous to the West Indies and perhaps northern 
South America; the type of the species, according to all the 
figures cited by Linneus, having solitary supra-axillary 
flowers. The Virginian plant referred here by Linneus is 
in all probability the next species. Though possibly either 
Cassia robusta, Pollard, or his C. Mississippiensi, or C. Simp- 
8onii may prove identical with typical Linnean C. Chamaz- 
