Am.  Four.  Pharm.  ) 
July,  1879.  j 
Note  on  Calabar  Beans. 
365 
NOTE  ON  CALABAR  BEANS. 
By  E.  M.  Holmes,  F  L.S., 
Curator  of  the  Museum  of  the  Pharmaceutical  Society  of  Great  Britain. 
For  some  time  past  there  have  occurred  among  the  Calabar  beans  or" 
commerce  some  specimens  which  are  longer  and  more  cylindrical,  and 
mostly  of  a  redder  tint  than  those  generally  met  with.  Only  one 
species  of  this  genus  having  been  hitherto  described,  my  attention  was- 
not  further  attracted  by  them  until  recently,  when  Mr.  Carruthers> 
F.R.S.,  casually  mentioned  to  me  that  in  the  Welwitsch  collection,  in 
the  British  Museum,  he  believed  there  was  a  second  species  of  Calabar 
bean,  which  had  been  described  in  the  "  Flora  of  Tropical  Africa,"  11 
under  the  name  of  Mucuna  cylindrosperma^  Welw.  On  examining 
these  specimens  I  found  them  to  be  identical  with  the  long  cylin- 
drical Calabar  beans  I  had  noticed  in  the  drug  of  commerce.  Fortu- 
nately pods  of  the  ordinary  Calabar  bean,  as  well  as  of  the  cylindrical 
kind,  were  both  to  be  seen  in  the  Botanical  Department  of  the  British 
Museum,  and  leaves  of  the  two  plants  in  the  Kew  Herbarium.  The 
pods  of  the  two  plants  on  comparison  were  evidently  extremely  similar,, 
both  having  a  smooth  outer  layer  or  epicarp  marked  with  numerous 
oblique  chinks  or  fissures,  about  half  an  inch  long,  a  friable  mesocarp, 
which  easily  decays  and  leaves  only  the  veins  distinctly  visible,  and  a 
minutely  tuberculated  endocarp.  The  inside  of  the  pod  is  lined  with 
loose  cellular  tissue,  which  looks  almost  like  a  very  thin  layer  of  wool. 
The  leaves  of  the  two  plants  are  also  very  similar,  being  composed 
of  three  stalked  leaflets  of  which  the  two  lateral  ones  are  unequal 
sided,  the  side  next  the  centre  leaflet  being  the  narrowest.  The  leaf 
presents  a  strong  resemblance  to  the  ordinary  French  bean,  except  that 
the  leaflets  are  more  cuspidate.  The  flowers  of  the  species  bearing 
the  cylindrical  seeds  have  not  been  seen,  and  this  fact,  taken  in  con- 
junction with  the  similarity  of  the  leaves  of  the  whole  group  of  Fha- 
seolece,  probably  led  to  the  plant  being  placed  in  the  genus  Mucuna. 
Welwitsch  describes  the  plant  as  a  climbing  shrub,  ascending  to  a 
considerable  height,  with  long  pendant  branches,  30  or  40  feet  long, 
hanging  down  from  the  trees  which  it  ascends.  It  has  smooth,  herba- 
ceous, shining,  ternate  leaves,  sub-cylindrical  pods,  4  to  6  inches  long, 
attennuated  both  at  base  and  apex,  with  the  surface  transversely  marked 
1  Oliver's  "  Flora  of  Tropical  Africa,"  vol.  ii,  pp.  186  and  19^. 
