Mucuna.} LEGUMINOSAE. 101 
. MUCUNA, Adans. 
Calyx campanulate, the 2 upper teeth wholly connate, the lowest one 
longest. Standard ioatiistionte: shorter than the other petals, with in- 
flected auricles at the base. Keel as long as or longer than the wings, 
curved, and usually tipped with a cartilaginous beak. Upper stamen free; 
anthers alternately basifixed and versatile. Ovary sessile, villous, with 
few ovules. Style filiform, with a small terminal stigma. Pod thick, 
ovate-oblong or elongate, usually covered with stinging hairs, 2-valved, 
coriaceous, filled between the seeds. Seeds with a linear rhaphe. — 
Twiners or tall climbers. Leaflets 3, the stipellae subulate or sometimes 
wanting wers large, rising in fascicles from gland-like nodes at the 
ends a long axillary peduncles. Bracts small or caducous. 
A considerable genus, spread over the tropical regions of Asia, Africa and America. 
Flowers green; pod smooth, glabra : ha M. ~~ ea. 
Flowers yellow and red pod with ceatuiiored lamellae, ‘hirsute : PMS ar 
1. M. gigantea, D De. Prod. II, 405. — A tall sirable: zlabrons, — 
acu the lateral ones very uneven-sided, their lower half bulging 
out strongly and provided with a basal nerve that almost equals the 
mi etiole 11/2‘. Stipellae short subulate, 1/2 long. Flowers 
greenish, 3 in a fascicle, on pedicels of 4—8” which are placed on short 
and thick spurs of 2—3” in length, crowded near the apex of a slender 
and nodding axillary peduncle which measures 3—6"'. Bracts scwkd 
wartlike: bracteoles below the calyx ovate, 4—6“, pubescent, caducou 
Calyx subtruncate, 4’, very short-toothed, strigose with appressed sti 
hairs in the bud. Standard broadly obovate, 9-11", emarginate. oe 
free, 15, auriculate, ciliate at the back. Keel angularly curved, biauri 
culate at the base. Filaments clavate toward the apex, the anthers 
barbed and jointed with them. Ovary 0 oblong, hirsute with appressed 
hairs, a style long (1‘) and siomnned ten with peltate stigma. 
5 eeameete of transverse 
1‘ in diameter. capi aitasiods uniformly brown or with black lines, 
the testa hard bony, the rhaphe extending over three fourths of the 
cireumference. — Dolichos giganteus, Willd. — Carpopogon giganteum, 
Roxb. — Citta nigricans, Lour. 
Hawsit! Pune and — Molokai, wigs eiginl Nat. cong «Kaeéé», — Has been 
fo “Samoa, Tonga and Viti Islds., as well as in N, Australia and India. 
2. M. urens, ‘DC. rod I, p. 405. — A fa a the young shoots 
eens with fine stinging hairs. Leaflets ovate, 2/2—5' * VU j2—8', the 
