The species grows fiaturally in the West Indies, in Vir- 
ginia and in Carolina, is sometimes described as herbaceous 
and biennial, sometimes as perennial, sometimes as frutes- 
cent or shrubby. Botanists have given it a full share of 
their attention, but it had been no where exemplified by a 
coloured figure. The stem seldom exceeds two feet in height, 
generally branched ; leaves pinnate, leaflets five-paired, ac- 
cording to Linnaus only three-paired in the maturer plant, 
outer pairs gradually larger, each leaflet ovate lanceolate, 
rough at the edge; petiole with a single protuberant gland 
on the inside of its base: when handled they diffuse a strong 
narcotic scent, which in our colonies has acquired the plant 
the appellation of “ The Stinking Weed.” ‘ 
Flowers on the racemes (which are axillary and terminal) 
in pairs; corolla concave, veined, of a dullish unspotted 
yellow colour; anthers opening by a double orifice at their 
summit, from the under margin of which a roundish lami- 
nar lobe is projected; fading from a light to a tawny yel- 
low. Siigma a dilated termination of the style. of a deep 
vivid green colour. Legume or pod, narrow, faleately li- 
near, flattened, torose or protuberant where each seed lies, 
edged by a narrow pale cartilaginous border, 
Upon the authority of a MS note in the Banksian Mu- 
seum, written when the Herbarium of that establishment 
was collated with the Linnean, we have resolved Cassra 
planisiliqua into the present species. Planisiliqua was. first 
recorded by Van Royen (or rather by Linnzus under his 
name) in a work subsequent to the Hortus Cliffortianus in 
which occidentalis first appeared, and had been probably 
taken up solely from the figure cited for it from Plumier’s 
work. The specimen found under that name in the Lin- 
nean Herbarium is an East Indian plant with eight-paired 
leaves, and plainly neither that of the description nor of the 
synonym. 
The drawing was made from a plant raised from seed, 
which flowered this autumn in Lady Aylesford’s collection 
at Stanmore. : 
A hothouse plant cultivated by Philip Miller in 1759. 
In Jamaica it is very common, and we are told used by the 
negroes as medicine. 
ead 
a The stamens and pistil. 4A stamen: magnified. ¢ The lobe that 
projects’ from below the double orifice of the larger anthers: magnified, 
d The pistil ; magnified, 
