100 Sesbania macrocarpa.
Stipules in pairs, lanceolate, or hastate, membranaceous, yellow-
green. Racemes axillary, shorter than the leaves, from two to
four-flowered. Flowers primrose-yellow—rarely expanded more
than represented in the plate. Vexillum gall-stone-yellow inside,
outside primrose-yellow. Carina orange-yellow, striped with
carmine-red. Wings orange-yellow, striped with purple. Legume
from seven to eight inches long, less than two-eighths of an inch
broad, slightly arcuate, stipitate, mucronate, compressed, maculated,
and pitted by longitudinal depressions ; invested within by a straw-
yellow, shining, membranaceous lining, and divided transversely by
about thirty-nine partitions. Seeds thirty-nine or forty, kidneyshaped,
umber-brown, an eighth of an inch long and somewhat less
in breadth, pitted on either side by a deep depression. Hilum
white. Flowers in August, and continues in bloom about six weeks
or two months. Grows in the neighbourhood of St. Louis and New
Orleans. The drawing was taken from a vigorous living plant raised
by Messrs. Landreth last summer from seeds furnished by Mr. Nut-
tall, and it has been carefully compared with several fine dried specimens
received from New Orleans.
Pursh, very properly objecting to the inadmissible generic name
Sesban, substituted that of Sesbania, which, though still faulty, is rather
better than the first, given by Poiret to a genus selected by him out of
iEschynomene. That botanist referred the Linnsean JE. grandiflora,
coccinea, and Sesban, to this newly-formed genus, but it has since
3
Sesbania macrocarpa. lo t
been augmented by two or three North American species, of which
one is now figured. It is a tropical genus of ten species, indigenous
to India and America, and one to Egypt.
Fig. l. Represents a flowering portion of the plant.
3 . A flower, artificially opened, to show its structure.
3. Inside of vexillum.
4. Carina.
5. Wings,
6. Stamens.
7. Calix and pistil.
8. Stipule.