72 
LEGUMINOSJS. 
[ Tephrosia . 
littoral variety with more silvery leaves and branches, fewer leaflets and smaller 
flowers and pods. 
2. T. Hookeriana, Wt. and Am. Prod. 212. Scarcely more than 
a variety of T. purpurea, from which it principally differs by having 
the pod clothed with minute spreading soft brown hairs. Stems 
suberect, 2-3 feet high, finely pubescent. Leaflets 13-19, oblanceo- 
late, £-1 in. long, thinly silvery. Calyx densely silky, £ in. long. 
Pod l|-2 in. long, £ in. broad, slightly recurved. Gralega hirta, 
Hamilt. in Trans. Linn. Soc., xiii. 516. 
Mauritius, at Pailles, Bouton ! Seychelles, common in Mahe and the other 
islands, Horne ! Also East Indies. 
# Sesbania aculeata, Pers. ; DC. Prod. ii. 265, widely spread through 
the tropics of the Old World, is established in many places in 
Mauritius and Seychelles in swampy ground. It is an erect glabrous 
shrubby annual, 3-4 feet high, with branchlets and leaf-rachises 
furnished with weak minute prickles, imparipinnate leaves £-1 foot 
long, 2(ML0 pairs of linear-oblong membranous glaucous mucronate 
leaflets, bright yellow papilionaceous flowers in lax axillary racemes, 
diadelphous stamens, campanulate membranous calyx with short 
deltoid teeth, slender cylindrical torulose pods 6-9 in. long with 
thickened sutures and distinct septa between the very numerous 
seeds. The plants given in Bojer’s Catalogue as S. cegyptiaca and 
cannabina both belong here. 
4. DESMODIUM, Desv. 
Calyx campanulate ; teeth longer than the tube, the two upper often 
subconnate. Corolla papilionaceous ; wings adhering to the obtuse 
keel. Stamens diadelphous ; anthers uniform. Ovary sessile or 
stalked; ovules 3-6 ; style incurved ; stigma minute, capitate. Pod 
composed of several indehiscent joints, with one seed in each, flattened 
on the face, the sutures slender, one or both wavy. — Shrubs or herbs, 
with trifoliolate or simple stipellate leaves and small red flowers, usually 
in racemes. Distrib. Round the world in the tropics, also Cape and 
United States. Species 100-120. 
Leaves simple, with a conspicuously winged petiole . . 1. D. triquetruum. 
Leaves trifoliolate ; petiole not winged. 
Erect, with flowers in ample peduncled racemes. 
Pod stalked ; joints rhomboid. 
Racemes very lax, few-flowered 2. D. Scalpe. 
Racemes dense, many-flowered * D. cajanifolium. 
Pod sessile ; joints square. 
Lower suture deeply indented. 
Leaflets large, downy below 3. D. incanum. 
Leaflets small, subglabrous 4. D. mauritianum. 
Lower suture little indented. 
Leaflets acute 5. D. oxybracteum. 
Leaflets obtuse 6. D. polycarpum. 
