80 



. Ord. LEGUMINOS^. 

 Tribe Pliaseolece. 



Genus Physostigma,* Balfour. B. & H., Gen., i, p. 533 ; Baill., 

 1. c., p. 233. One species only known. 



80. Physostigma venenOSUm, Balf. in Trans. Roy. Soc. Edinb., 

 xxii, p. 310 (1861). 



Calabar Bean. 



Figures. Trans. Royal Soc. E-linb., xxii, tt. 16, 17; Baill., 1. c., figs 

 153-155. 



Description. A large perennial climber ; the stem, which is 

 woody and 2 inches in diameter below, reaching sometimes 

 50 feet in length, cylindrical, smooth, slender. Leaves alternate, 

 large, pinnately trifoliolate ; petiole stiff, thickened at the base, 

 with small triangular stipules; leaflets stalked, with short thickened 

 petiolules and small stipellao, 3 6 inches long, ovate-attenuate, 

 the terminal one broader, the lateral ones unequal at the base, 

 veiny, smooth. Flowers rather large, in long, lax, pendulous 

 zigzag racemes, with a thick rachis set with large solid tubercles 

 or knots, from each of which spring two or three articulated, 

 short, slender, smooth pedicels. Calyx cup-shaped gibbous above, 

 smooth, somewhat fleshy, 5-lobed, the two upper lobes obsolete, 

 truncate. Corolla papilionaceous ; standard ovate-orbicular when 

 expanded, but folded together and curved back into almost a ring, 

 auriculate at the base, beautifully and finely veined ; wings free, 

 almost hidden by the standard, ob ovate -triangular, curved up- 

 wards, eared near the base, with a longish claw ; keel half con- 

 cealed, greatly prolonged and stiffly twisted into a somewhat spiral 

 beak. Stamens 10, the upper one free, the other 9 combined for 

 about half their length into a sheath round the pistil ; anthers 

 small, similar. Ovary stalked, the stalk surrounded by a promi- 

 nent 10-lobed disk, style about 1^ inch long filiform, curved with 



* From 0yo-a, a bladder, and stigma; on tlie supposition that the stigmatic 

 appendage was hollow and inflated. 



