CASSIA CHAMA:CRISTA. 
LARGE-FLOWERED SENSITIVE PEA. 
NATURAL ORDER, LEGUMINOSA:. 
CassIA CHAMACRISTA, Linnzeus.—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 ora 
Cestrica. See also Gray’s Manual of the Botany of the Northern United States, Chap- 
man’s Mora of the Southern United States, and Wood’s Class-Book of Botany.) 
é By HE familiar name of Sensitive plant, in so far as it is ap- 
tZ“4]| plied to this species, is liable to mislead. There is but 
avery 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 
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