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

1982] CASSIINAE—SENNA 439
piano-compressed when young but ± distended when ripe, 2-carinate by the
sutures, the remotely strigulose valves differentiated lengthwise into marginal
bands of green (later stramineous) tissue issuing from the sutures and a central
red or livid (later brown) band, this ± elevated over and depressed between each
successive pair of seeds, the seminal cavities separated by complete membranous
septa, mostly 1.5-2.5(-3, or the distal one -3.5) mm long; seeds ah (or aU but
1-few distal ones) turned so as to present their broad areolate faces to the septa,
compressed-obovoid or -suborbicular (3.1-)3.4^.7(-5.l) x (2.3-)2.9-3.8 mm,
the dull olivaceous, fawn-brown or putty-colored, rarely castaneous testa minutely
papillate or nearly smooth, the waxy exterior coat crackled in age; n =
14, reportedly sometimes = 13 in Old World.—Collections: 311.
Disturbed and waste places in forest, brush, savanna and riparian environ­
ments, in arable and pasture land, on roadsides, about farms and villages where
sometimes planted for medicine, especially vigorous and abundant in ditches and
seasonally moist depressions or on shores, mostly below 500 m but ascending to
1200 m in s. Mexico and on the Brazilian Planalto, now everywhere weedy in the
New World, not demonstrably native and perhaps a paleotropical immigrant of
long standing, intermptedly widespread almost throughout the American Tropics,
but not recorded from the Pacific slope in Pem and absent from much of the
Amazonian Hylaea, extending n. around the foothills ofthe Mexican Plateau into
warm temperate Sinaloa and Tamauhpas, thence n.-e. in United States around
the Guh to peninsular Florida and n. in the e. and centr. States to ±36° as a self-
perpetuating weed, casually further (cf. Iseley, 1975, map 51), in S. America s.
to Parana in Brazil, and to n.-w. and n.-e. Argentina (Salta and Tucuman; Mi­
siones and Corrientes). Also widespread in simUar habitats almost throughout
tropical Africa, India, Sri Lanka, Indochina, s. China, Malesia, n. Austraha, and
e. through Micronesia to Hawauan Is.—Fl. in favorable circumstances throughout
the year, in temperate climates in midsummer and fall.—Coffee senna; hedion­
dilla, frijolillo, cornezuelo, brusca, bicho (Mexico and Latin America); stinking
weed, pois puant, p.p. noir (West Indies); martinica (Cuba); dandelion, styptic
weed (Jamaica); chilinchile (Colombia); po/ra (Choco); retamilla (Pem); mamuri
(Bolivia); cafetillo, cafeton, cafe del campo, c. de Bonpland, taperibd (Argen­
tina); mata pasta, fedegoso (-a), taratucil, paramarioba, mata patinho (Brazil).
With the exception of S. obtusifolia, the Coffee Senna is the weedy member
of its genus most widespread over tropical lowland and warm temperate America,
a coarse ill-scented plant that colonizes roadside ditches, mndown or abandoned
farmland, and disturbed places sometimes far from habitations. It is often but
needlessly confused with C. obtusifolia; at anthesis its basal petiolar gland and
leaflets broadest below, not above the middle, and later on the wider shorter pod
(mostly 7-9, not 2.5-6 mm broad) distinguish it handUy. Its closest relatives are
the local Argentine S. scabriuscula, mentioned at greater length above, and the
equally weedy but more local S. sophera, different in its more fruticose stems,
smaller and slightly more numerous leaflets, pedunculate racemes and subterete pod
dilated when ripe by seeds disposed in two paraUel rows. From these and from all
other American oncolobiums, however, S. occidentalis is definitively separable
by the form ofthe style-tip, as described in our key to the series; and S. sophera
alone shares the relatively large stipules commonly auriculate-clasping on the
side further from the petiole. The ordinarily erect or narrowly ascending pod of
S. occidentaUs varies from straight to gently arched, but if curved at all h is
incurved toward vertical, with seminherous suture concave, not arched outward
Uke that of all other oncolobiums except S. scabriuscula.