Cassiinae pt 1 NY-Botanical_gardens_Vol. 35_1 - Copy.pdf - Antbase

136 MEMOIRS OF THE NEW YORK BOTANICAL GARDEN [VOL. 35
out much of Central America below 18°N and especiaUy abundant in Panama, is
in great part that which Bentham (1871, p. 521, t. 61) had in niind as Cassia
oxyphylla, though not the genuine C. oxyphylla Kunth and never fully extricated
from C. bacillaris. It is distinguished from these, as from all sympatric quadrifoil
sennas and indeed from aU other Bacillares by its funcrionaUy tetramerous androecium,
from which not only the three adaxial, but also the three, usually
heteromorphic abaxial members are suppressed or reduced to rudiments, leaving
four stout straight or only shghriy incurved anthers erect, paraUel to each other,
on very short filaments. This columnar androecium determines the shape ofthe
mature coroUa which forms around it a campanulate sheath of loosely appressed
petals, perceptibly different from the expanded, bowl-shaped flower of S. bacillaris
or S. fruticosa. The pod, finely Ulustrated in Bentham's plate of C. oxy­
phylla, which we conjecture to be drawn from a Panamanian coUecrion (Fendler
88, K), is essentiaUy that of 5. bacillaris in form, texture and dehiscence, so that
fruiring specimens are only with difficulty separated by the less obhque, less
intricately venulose leaflets unless, as in Fendler 88 (but unfortunately not con-
sistenriy), the seta terminaring the leaf-stalk is transmuted into a gland, a feature
foreign to S. bacillaris.
IMaterial of S. hayesiana at Kew annotated before 1871 by Bentham as Cassia
oxyphylla includes good tetramerous flowers collected in IVlexico by Jurgensen,
Liebmann, and E. P. Johnson, in Nicaragua by Oersted, and in Panama by Sutton
Hayes, but Bentham made no menrion of the androecium. In his monograph
(1871, p. 522) he contradictorily cited several of these specimens as a possible
variety of C. bacillaris differing in their broader, more densely pubescent leaves,
but at the same rime "evidently nearly alhed to C. oxyphylla."" The species was
first fully and correcriy diagnosed and characterized by Schery (1951, p. 77) under
the technicaUy superfluous name C maxonii, superfluous because a prior C.
hayesiana, obligatory in the circumstances, was overlooked. In extricating the
tetramerous C. hayesiana from sympatric heptamerous aUies, Schery was able
to reduce four Brittonian segregates to one superficially variable entity. Pursuing
the same course outside of Panama, we are now obliged to hst as synonyms no
less than thirteen names proposed by Britton and colleagues together with one
of Pittier from Venezuela and the relatively early (but homonymous) C. inaequilatera
Ram. Goy. The chamaefistulas are mentioned below in relation to
internal variation in C hayesiana.
In spite of the elaborate synonymy which suggests the contrary, 5. hayesiana
is not by any means an exceptionally polymorphic senna. Stature of the plant
covers a range from a low sprawhng shrub to a small forest tree, but this range
is common to most Bacillares. The vesture of young branchlets and foliage varies
(as described above) in density, length and orientation. Young leaves and shade
leaves are submembranous, whereas older ones or those borne in the canopy
tend to be firmer, sometimes buUate by depression of the secondary and subse­
quent venulation. The leaflets vary in outline, relatively narrow ones tending to
be drawn out into acuminate or even caudate tips, whereas broader ones are
more abruptly narrowed into a triangular or deltate point. The normal, fuUy de­
veloped inflorescence is an exserted panicle of racemes, sometimes leafy at the
base but leafless distally; but especially out of season, or early in the season of
normal bloom, some random racemes are often borne solitary in axils of mature
leaves. The floral bracts, ordinarily caducous, occasionaUy persist into fuU an­
thesis. The perianth varies considerably in size, but care must be taken to distin­
guish between flowers at full anthesis and those which, despite exserted androecia
which give an impression of maturity, are in reality not fully blown. The androe-