Indigofera suffruticosa Mill.

• Authority

  Britton, Nathaniel L. Flora Borinqueña.

• Family

  Fabaceae

• Scientific Name

  Indigofera suffruticosa Mill.

• Description

  Species Description - Philip Miller was a distinguished British gardener and botanist, nearly contemporaneous with Linnaeus, and first gave many botanical names to plants through publication and description in his Dictionary; some of these names antedate those of Linnaeus for the same species, as in the case of the shrub here illustrated, where Miller's name has 3 years priority. It is frequent nearly all over tropical America, and ranges northward into the southeastern United States, also introduced into tropical parts of the Old World; in Porto Rico growing in fields and thickets, on hillsides and river-banks at lower and middle elevations, and on the small islands Mona and Vieques. Indigofera (some species yield indigo) is a genus founded by Linnaeus on the typical species, Indigofera tinctoria, a shrub, native of the Old World tropics, occasionally grown in tropical America. The genus consists of nearly 300 species of herbs and shrubs, inhabiting warm and tropical regions. They have once compound leaves, and small, clustered flowers. The 5 teeth of the calyx are nearly alike, or the lower longer; the standard petal is ovate, or orbicular, the wing-petals oblong, the keel upright; the 10 stamens are usually united by their filaments; the ovary is 1-celled, the style slender. The pod is slender or short, partitioned between the few or many seeds. Indigofera suffruticosa (shrubby) becomes about a meter high, with slender, tough, finely hairy branches. The leaves, from 5 to 12 centimeters long, have from 9 to 17, oblong, or oblong-obovate, thin leaflets about 3 centimeters long, or shorter, appressed-hairy, at least on the underside. The flowers are borne several or many together in clusters from 2 to 5 centimeters long, the individual ones on stalks only about 1 millimeter long, and about as long as the calyx; the yellowish petals are about 4 millimeters long. The curved and ridged pods are from 8 to 15 millimeters long, about 2 millimeters thick, and contain from 3 to 8 seeds; they are borne on very short, reflexed stalks. Indigofera guatemalensis, with nearly straight pods on spreading stalks, occurs in western parts of Porto Rico, and Indigofera tinctoria, the typical species of the genus, yielding the dye indigo, has been introduced and occasionally found wild.

• Discussion

  Anil Wild Indigo Pea Family Indigofera suffruticosa, Miller, Gardeners Dictionary, edition 8, no. 2. 1768. Indigofera Anil Linnaeus, Mantissa 2: 272. 1771.