Senna fruticosa
Content
Description
Shrub or small tree up to 6 m high, all young parts greyish pubescent.
Leaves with 2 pairs of leaflets; petiole slender, puberulous, c. 3 cm long; rachis slender 1-3 cm, bearing an oblong, nipple-shaped gland between the lower pair of leaflets.
Stipules linear, 3-4 mm long, early caducous.
Sepals oblong-obovate, yellowish green often mingled with red, puberulous, 7-11 mm.
Petals yellow, pubescent on both sides, broadly obovate to orbicular, 2-2.5 cm.
Stamens 1 (or 6): 3 with filaments filiform, 2-4 mm long and anthers glabrous, strongly curved, 6-7 mm, rostrate at apex, opening by an apical pore; 4 (or 3) with filaments dilated distally, 2-3 mm and anthers similar but thicker and 8-9 mm long; upper 3 stamens usually absent.
Ovary sessile, densely appressed pubescent, style slender, stigma inconspicuous.
Seeds 80-100 embedded in a foetid, black pulp, compressed ovoid, 5-6 mm, dark brown.
Distribution
Asia-Tropical: Borneo (Sabah present); Jawa (Jawa present); New Guinea present; Sulawesi (Sulawesi present), E Kalimantan present, Mexico and Central America
Indigenous to Mexico and Central America. Cultivated throughout the tropics as ornamental, also in the Malesian area (recorded from Java, Sabah, E Kalimantan, Celebes, New Guinea). It seems rarely to have escaped cultivation and become naturalized. Seed setting is said to be poor.