Barbieria pinnata (Pers.) Baill.

• Authority

  Britton, Nathaniel L. Flora Borinqueña.

• Family

  Fabaceae

• Scientific Name

  Barbieria pinnata (Pers.) Baill.

• Description

  Species Description - Strikingly conspicuous when in bloom, this slender shrub, or woody vine is frequent in thickets in moist parts of Porto Rico at lower and middle altitudes, ranges through Santo Domingo, Haiti, and Cuba, and grows also in continental tropical America from Guatemala to Peru. It is an interesting monotype, first classified however, as a Galactia, in 1807, from study of a specimen collected somewhere in the West Indies, and four years later as a Clitoria, from study of one from Porto Rico, but in 1825 recognized as a distinct genus. Its stems are much-branched, the long, slender branches hairy when young, the once-compound leaves with from 6 to 10 pairs of thin leaflets and an odd one at the end. The large, red, loosely clustered flowers are highly ornamental, but we have not seen the plant in any garden. The generic name Barbieria commemorates Jean Baptiste Gregoire Barbier, a French pharmacologist; differences from other genera of the Pea Family are found in the long-tubular calyx, the long-clawed petals and in the pod, which is partitioned between the seeds. The branches of Barbieria pinnata (pinnately compound leaves) may become a meter long, or longer. Its leaves are short-stalked, with narrow stipules about 10 millimeters long; the leaflets are from 1 to 5 centimeters long, blunt at both ends, oblong, smooth or nearly so above, appressed-hairy and pale green beneath. The flowers are few, in slender stalked clusters; the hairy calyx is about 3 centimeters long, with 5, narrow, long-pointed teeth; the standard is broadly oblong, about 5 centimeters long, the more narrowly oblong wings a little shorter, the keel blunt; the stamens are shorter than the petals, 9 united by their filaments, 1 separate; the slender style is bearded along the inner side. The pod is flat, hairy, 4 or 5 centimeters long, about 6 millimeters wide, and splits at maturity into 2 valves, releasing the black, oblong seeds. Our illustration was first published in "Addisonia", plate 384, June, 1925.

• Discussion

  Ehredadera Barbieria Pea Family Galactia pinnata Persoon, Synopsis Plantarum 2: 502. 1807. Clitoria polyphylla Poiret, in Lamarck, Encyclopédic Méthodique Botanique, Supplement 2; 3OO. 1811. Barbieria polyphylla De Candolle, Memoires sur la Famille des Léguminensis 242, plate 39. 1825. Barbieria pinnata Baillon, Histoire des plantes 2: 263. 1870.