A Cultivated Species of Cassia Allied to C. javanica

Abstract

Io506), and probably in other African territories besides. It does not, however, agree with C. nodosa nor with the closely related C.javanica. This plant is also cultivated elsewhere; there are specimens of it at Kew from India, Ceylon, North Borneo and Barbados. De Wit has revised the cassias of Malaysia in Webbia 11, 197-292 (1955), and according to this account the plant is C. javanica L. var. agnes De Wit (l.c. 220). The variety was described from a cultivated plant in North Borneo (Cuadra 3049), of which there is an isotype at Kew. De Wit stated (l.c., 222) that var. agnes was 'only known cultivated. Possibly wild in the North or Northeast of the Deccan Peninsula'. There are, however, at Kew numerous specimens from Siam, Indo-China and Cochin China clearly referable to var. agnes; examples are: Thorel 980, Godefroy 309 and Talmy 56 from Cochin China, Squires 8o02 from Indo-China, and R. Schomburgk 121 and Kerr 10676 from Siam. Some, at least, of them appear to come from native localities, and the original home of var. agnes is presumably in that corner of Asia. The characters of var. agnes are well maintained in this material, in particular the structure of the inflorescence in which the racemes are aggregated into terminal corymbs borne on leafy shoots. This contrasts strongly with C. javanica and C. nodosa, in which the racemes are simple or subsimple and borne on short normally leafless shoots arising laterally from the older twigs. This, taken in conjunction with the other differences in foliage mentioned by De Wit, makes it desirable for var. agnes to be recognised as a distinct species: