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

48 MEMOIRS OF THE NEW YORK BOTANICAL GARDEN [VOL. 35
and glabrate at maturity, obscurely constricted at the septa, the firm endocarp
only 0.2-0.3 mm thick in section, the interseminal septa almost papery 0.1-0.2
mm thick, each locule fiUed with a finally detached suberous disc 4-5 mm thick
enveloping a seed; seeds horizontal, broadside to the septa within their suberous
envelope, plumply biconvex-obovid, ±6.5-8 x 6-7 x 4-5.5 mm, the hilum sub­
basal on one broad face, the testa pale or chestnut brown, smooth and glossy;
X = 12, 14.—Fig. 2 (pod).
As described herein, C. javanica consists of a complex series of forms thought
to be native from the Bay of Bengal southeast through Malaya, Sumatra and
Indonesia to Timor and New Guinea and through Indochina to southern China
(Yunnan) and the Philippines, but for so long and so widely planted for ornament
both within and beyond its supposed homeland that aboriginal patterns of dis­
persal are now difficuh or impossible to reconstruct. The plants vary between
themselves in a) pubescence b) amplitude of stipules, c) shape of leaflets, d)
posirion of racemes on new or old wood, accompanied or not by coeval foliage,
e) size of calyx, f) amplitude and length (not necessarily correlated) of petals, g)
size of ferrile anthers, and h) chromosome number; furthermore some trees are
said to have, parricularly when immature, trunks and annorinous branchlets
armed with persistent spinescent branchlets, but the significance of this feature,
seldom noted by collectors and not seen on herbarium specimens, cannot be
esrimated. In the past, various syndromes ofthe characters just hsted have been
evoked in support of segregate species C. nodosa Buch.-Ham. ex Roxb., C.
megalantha Dene., C. agnes (De Wit) Brenan, and the varieties indochinensis
Gagnep. and pubifolia Merr., but the identification of specimens is stiU difficuh
and the hterature is contradictory. The species most persistently segregated from
C. javanica, latterly with explicit misgivings, is C. nodosa, originaUy described
from trees grown by Roxburgh at the Calcutta Botanic Garden, to which it was
introduced from the region of the Ganges Delta (Chittagong, East Pakistan). Re­
cent and contemporary authors who maintain C. nodosa either as a distinct
species or as a subspecies of C. javanica (De Wit, 1955, p. 204; Isely, 1975, p.
101; Ah, 1973, p. 10; K. & S. Larsen, 1974, p. 205) attribute to it relatively smaU
(but still dilated) stipules, short petals and acute leaflets; but this formula cannot
be apphed usefully to the whole complex, for stipules proper in C. nodosa may
be found on plants with obtuse-retuse leaflets or large flowers (or both). When
Brenan (1958, I.e.) raised C. javanica var. agnes De Wit to specific rank he
introduced as a taxonomically meaningful criterion a difference between leafless
cauhflorous simple racemes and leafy terminal, simple or branched ones, the
branched type being supposedly characteristic of C. agnes. This same mode of
variarion was noticed in Philippine C. javanica by MerriU (Philip. J. Sci., Bot. 6:
48. 1910) who, somewhat paradoxically but perhaps foUowing King (Mat. Fl.
Malay Pen. 9: 155. 1902), associated cauliflory with C. nodosa, not with C.
javanica as most others have done. Backer & Backhuizen van den Brink (Fl.
Java 1: 537. 1963) state that in Java C. javanica and C. nodosa both flower from
defohate branches, but they maintain the species as different in the intensity of
sepal and flower color, in average shape of leaflets and in size of calyx (nodosa
5-7.5 mm, javanica 7.5-10 mm). No consensus as to the differential characters,
the taxonomic status, or the exact dispersal of C. nodosa has been reached.
In our search for acceptable names for the cassias of the C. javanica complex
cuhivated and weakly naturahzed in the Americas, we have sorted aU available
Asiatic material in several ways, using each of the variable features hsted in the
preceding paragraph as the primary division. Partition by characters a, c, d and