MIMOSA FAMILY. Mimosaceae. 
> The peculiar orange-yellow of these 
esert Senna, 
Golden Cassia. handsome flowers at once attracts our 
Cassia armata attention, for their tint is quite different 
Yellow from the greenish-yellow, which is so 
an se much more common. They grow in the 
desert, forming big clumps, two feet high 
and two or three feet across, but have almost no foliage. 
The numerous, smooth stems are very pale in color, often 
bluish or gray, with a few dark-green leaves, with six, 
very small, stiff leaflets, and bearing clusters of numerous, 
sweet-smelling flowers, almost regular and about three- 
quarters of an inch across, with a downy calyx and the 
small, flat pod also downy. 
MIMOSA FAMILY. Mimosaceae. 
A large family, most of them tropical; herbs, shrubs, or 
trees; leaves alternate, generally compound, usually with 
two or three leaflets; flowers small, regular and perfect, in 
clusters; calyx with three to six lobes or teeth; petals of 
the same number, separate, or more or less united, neither 
sepals nor petals overlapping in the bud; stamens as many 
as the petals, or twice as many, or numerous, separate or 
united; ovary superior; fruit a pod. 
There are several kinds of Calliandra, low shrubs or herbs. 
Hie Basis An odd little shrub, pretty and very Ja- 
Calliéndra panese in character, about a foot tall, with 
eriophylla a few, pale-gray, spreading branches and 
Pink very scanty foliage. The small leaves are 
Spring 
; cut into many tiny leaflets and look like 
Arizona 
those of a Mimosa, the buds are deep . 
pink and the flowers are in clusters towards the ends of 
the branches and slightly sweet-scented. They are very 
queer-looking, but exceedingly pretty, for the purplish 
calyx and corolla are so small that the flower appears to be 
merely a tuft of many stamens, about an inch long, with 
threadlike filaments, white at base and shading to bright 
pink at the tips. The pistil is also long and pink, so the 
whole effect is a bunch of pink fuzz, airy in form and de- 
licately shaded in color. These little shrubs sometimes 
bloom when they are only a few inches high, looking very 
quaint, like dwarf plants in a toy garden, and are among 
the earliest spring flowers. 
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