XLIII. LEGUMINOS^J. 
47B 
91. -MIMOSA, Linn. 
(Seeming to mimic, or to possess animal sensibility.) 
Flowers small, capitate (or spicate), 4 or 5-merous. Calyx minute, campanu- 
late, dentate or irregularly laciniate with setaceous segments. Petals connate, 
more or less or nearly free, valvate. Stamens as many or twice as many as 
petals, free, exserted ; anthers small, eglandular ; pollen grains indefinite. Pod 
oblong or linear, usually flat, valves separating entire or in transverse articles 
from the persistent sutural replum. — Herbs, shrubs or trees, sometimes scandent, 
aculeate or unarmed. Leaves bipinnate, often sensitive ; petiolar glands rarely 
present. Pedunculate heads (or spikes) axillary or racemose towards the 
extremities, solitary or fascicled. 
A very large chiefly tropical American genus, with few outliers in the Old World. — Oliver. 
1. 1ME. pudica (bashful), Linn.; DC. Prod. ii. 426. A prickly procumbent 
spreading shrub. Leaves digitate. Pinnae 3 to 4, nearly sessile, 2 to 3in. long; 
leaflets 24 to 40, glabrous, subcoriaceous. Flowers light purple or lilac, on 
small pedunculate heads, all down the branches, 1 or 2 from each axil. Pod Jin. 
long, 3 to 4-seeded, with very abundant straw-colored weak prickles from both 
sutures, as long as the breadth of the pod. 
Hab.: Tropical America, but spread over most tropical countries, naturalised and quite a pest 
in some parts of Queensland. 
92. ACACIA, Willd. 
(From akazo, to sharpen ; many species spinescent.) 
(Yachellia, W. and Am.; Tetracheilos, Lehm.; Chithonanthus, Lelim.) 
Sepals 5, 4, or 3, free or united (wanting in A. Huegelii and A. squamata, 
W. Australian species). Petals as many, free or united (wanting in A. squamata). 
Stamens indefinite, usually very numerous, free or slightly connected at the very 
base. Pod linear or oblong, flat or nearly cylindrical, straight, falcate or variously 
twisted, opening in 2 valves or indehiscent. Seeds more or less flattened, 
usually marked in the centre of each face with an oval or horseshoe-shaped 
depression or opaque spot or ring, sometimes very obscure. Funicle usually 
thickened into a fleshy aril under or round the seed. — Trees, shrubs, climbers, or 
rarely undershrubs, with or without prickles or stipular spines. Leaves twice 
pinnate or reduced to a simple phyllodium or dilated petiole. Flowers usually 
yellow or white, in globular heads or cylindrical spikes, often polygamous. 
A very large genus, dispersed over the warmer regions of the globe, and in Australia the most 
numerous in species of all Pheenogamous genera. Of the Australian species, one only, A. 
Farnesiana, is common to the warmer regions of the New and the Old World, the remainder are 
all endemic. Of these by far the greater number belong to the phyllodineous series, which is 
entirely Australian, with the exception of a very few from New Caledonia, the Indian Archipelago, 
and the Pacific Islands, none of which can be specifically identified with any Australian ones, 
although very near some of the tropical species. Acacias are also very generally distributed over 
every part of Australia, but are entirely absent from New Zealand. — Benth. 
Taken as a whole, the genus is the most marked of those which have been dismembered from 
the Linnsen Mimosa, being at once distinguished from Inga and its allies by the free stamens, 
and from the true Mimosece by their indefinite number ; but, for its subdivision, notwithstanding 
considerable differences in the flowers and more striking ones in the fruit, it has been found 
impossible to establish upon these differences any definite sections, even among those species 
where both flowers and fruit are well known, and in the majority of specimens gathered the pod 
is neglected by collectors. Species with the most discrepant pods are sometimes almost identical 
in foliage, and, on the other hand, pods apparently identical sometimes belong to species widely 
different in foliage and even in flower. I have therefore on each of the three occasions when I 
have gone through the genus in detail, with a large number of specimens before me, in vain 
sought for any better mode of distributing the species than in Series, founded chiefly upon 
foliage and inflorescence. There are only one or two species in which the cylindrical spike 
appears to pass into the globular head, and the venation of the phyllodia is nearly, though not 
quite, as constant. The glands on the upper edge of the phyllodia and on the common petiole 
