CASSIA CHAM^CRISTA. 



LARGE-FLOWERED SENSITIVE PEA. 



NATURAL ORDER, LEGUMINOS^. 



Cassia Cham^crista, Linnseus. — Stems rather leaning or spreading; leaflets eight to twelve 

 or fifteen pairs, linear-oblong; flowers rather large; stamens ten, unequal. Stem one 

 to two feet high, firm and sub-ligneous at the base, much branched, often purplish. 

 Leaflets half an inch to near an inch long, minutely ciliate-serrulate, sub-sessile; common 

 petiole about one-third of an inch in length below the leaflets, with a depressed or cup- 

 like gland on the upper side. Flowers deep bright yellow (usually with purple spot at the 

 base), in lateral sub-sessile fascicles above the axils of the leaves, — often in pairs, sometimes 

 three or four. Legume about two inches long, hairy at the sutures. (Darlington's Flora 

 Cestrica. See also Gray's Manual of the Botany of the Northern United States, Chap- 

 man's Flora of the Southern United Slates, and Wood's Class- Book of Botany.') 



HE familiar name of Sensitive plant, in so far as it is ap- 

 plied to this species, is liable to mislead. There is but 

 a very distant relationship between the Sensitive Pea and the 

 sensitive plant of poetry. The species which suggested Shelley's 

 beautiful verses, beginning, 



"A sensitive plant in a garden grew," 



is the Mimosa pudica, a native of the more tropical regions of the 

 American continent, and outside of the limit of the United 

 States. Even in its sensitive features there is very little relation 

 to the true sensitive plant, for its closing motion when touched 

 is very faint indeed. The writer has often brushed severely 

 against it, without being able to detect any of the irritability of 

 its namesake, although after many minutes have elapsed the 

 leaflets seem partially closed. If, however, a branch be plucked 

 from the parent stem, the leaflets rapidly close. It has been a 



(«73) 



