Ditremexa hirsuta (L.) Britton & Rose ex Britton & P. Wilson

• Title

  Ditremexa hirsuta (L.) Britton & Rose ex Britton & P. Wilson

• Authors

  Nathaniel Lord Britton, Frances W. Horne

• Scientific Name

  Ditremexa hirsuta (L.) Britton & Rose ex Britton & P.Wilson

• Description

  Flora Borinqueña Ditremexa hirsuta Hairy Senna Family Caesalpiniaceae Senna Family Cassia hirsuta Linnaeus, Species Plantarum 376. 1753. Ditremexa hirsuta Britton and Rose; Britton and Wilson, Scientific Survey of Porto Rico and the Virgin Islands 5: 372. 1924. Our first knowledge of the occurrence of this herbaceous plant in Porto Rico was had from finding it in 1925, in waste grounds near Monte Helechal, near Aguas Buenas. A few other localities have since been detected, all in waste, or cultivated ground; we infer that the species has been recently introduced. It grows also in Jamaica, Guadeloupe, Martinique , St. Vincent, Tobago, Trinidad, and has wide distribution in continental tropical America from El Salvador to Colombia and Brazil. The plant is very hairy, malodorous, with broad leaflets and yellow flowers in short, axillary clusters. An account of the genus Ditremexa may be found with our description of Ditremexa occidentalis. Ditrimexa hirsuta (hirsute) is perennial, from 0.5 to 1.5 meters high. The leaves are from 12 to 30 centimeters long, the stalk bearing a stout, oblong-cylindric gland near the base; they have from 3 to 5 pairs of thin, pointed, very hairy, ovate to lance-shaped leaflets, short-stalked, from 4 to 7 centimeters long. The flowers are in short-stalked, axillary clusters, with short bracts which early fall away; the oblong, blunt, hairy sepals are about 9 millimeters long, the petals about twice as long. The narrow, hirsute, somewhat curved pods are from 12 to 20 centimeters long, only about 5 millimeters wide, the seeds transverse, orbicular, brown, about 3.5 millimeters broad.