Senna viminea

  • Title

    Senna viminea

  • Authors

    Howard S. Irwin, Rupert C. Barneby

  • Scientific Name

    Senna viminea (L.) H.S.Irwin & Barneby

  • Description

    29.  Senna viminea (Linnaeus) Irwin & Barneby, comb. nov. Cassia viminea Linnaeus, Syst. Nat. ed. 10, 1016, 1759 (jun) & Pl- Jamaic. Pugill. 12. 1759 (dec, reprinted in Amoen. Acad. 5: 397. 1760), all based on Cassia No. 8 (viminea etc.) P. Browne, Civ. & Nat. Hist. Jam. 223. 1756.— . . native of the coldest mountains of Linguanea . . . near Cold-Spring [Hanover Parish]."—Holotypus, LINN 528.6!-Scolodia viminea (Linnaeus) Rafinesque, Sylva Tell. 128. 1838. Chamaefistula viminea (Linnaeus) Britton & Rose, N. Amer. Fl. 23(4): 232. 1930.

    Cassia melanocarpa Bertero ex DeCandolle, Prod. 2: 491. 1825.—"in Jamaica. Bertero."—Holotypus, labelled "C. fruticescens Bertero ex Jamaica, herb. Berteroana misit Balbis 1822," G-DC!—Chamaefistula melanocarpa (DeCandolle) G. Don, Gen. Hist. Diehl. Pl. 2: 451. 1832.—Equated with C. viminea by Bentham, 1871, l.c.

    Cassia fruticescens Bertero ex Sprengel, Syst. 2: 335. 1825.—"Jamaica."—No typus known to survive, but on circumstantial evidence based on an isotypus of the preceding.

    Chamaefistula tocotana Rose ex Britton & Killip, Ann. N.Y. Acad. Sci. 35(3): 174. 1936.— "Cuesta de Tocota, road from Buenaventura to Calf, El Valle, Colombia, December, 1905, Pittier 720 . . ."—Holotypus, US! isotypus, NY!

    Sena spuria tetraphylla, siliqua lata compressa Sloane, Voy. Jam. 2: 49, t. 180, fig. 6, 7. 1725.

    Cassia viminea sensu Bentham, 1871, p.p., quoad pl. jamaic.; Fawcett & Rendle, 1920, p. 103; Adams, 1972, p. 324.

    Weak diffuse or trailing shrubs with sometimes virgate flowering branches, becoming vinelike or at forest edge sarmentose-arborescent with trunk up to 4 cm diam, at anthesis 3-13 m, with angulate young and subterete ribbed older branchlets, puberulent with fine incumbent or subappressed, on stems rarely subretrorse often lutescent hairs up to 0.1-0.25(-0.3) mm, the foliage strongly bicolored, brownish-olivaceous lustrous and often glabrous or glabrate above, paler and at least thinly puberulent along major veins beneath, the inflorescence thyrsiform-paniculate leafy at base but distally exserted.

    Stipules erect incurved linear-attenuate 3-8 mm, at base 0.25-0.5 mm wide, early dry caducous.

    Lvs (below inflorescence, where ± abruptly diminished) 6.5-13 cm; petiole including the discolored wrinkled pulvinus (1-) 1.5-4 cm, at middle 0.5-0.9 mm diam, bluntly carinate dorsally, openly shallowly sulcate ventrally; rachis 5-16 mm, shorter than petiole; glands between the proximal or between both pairs, stipitate, (1.2-) 1.5-3.5 mm tall, the body narrowly lance-fusiform, commonly acute 0.35-0.5 mm diam glabrous; pulvinules 1.5-2.5 mm; distal pair of lfts obliquely ovate- or lance-acuminate 4-8 x (1.4-)2-3.6 cm, 1.6-3.2 times as long as wide, at base rounded on proximal and cuneate on distal side, the margins strongly revolute, the straight or very gently incurved midrib with 8-13 pairs of major camptodrome secondary, connecting tertiary and sometimes in addition finer reticular venulation prominulous on both faces but more sharply so beneath; proximal pair 1/3-2/3 as long, often proportionately wider.

    Racemes solitary 6-20-fld, at anthesis subcorymbose, the axis including short peduncle (1-)2-5.5 cm; bracts usually lanceolate acute 3-6 x 0.6-2 mm, rarely obovate obtuse cucullate up to 3-4 mm wide, caducous; pedicels (at and after full anthesis) (10-) 12-25 mm; young buds subglobose, glabrous or puberulent; sepals subpetaloid yellow or yellow-edged, little graduated, oblong-obovate or broadly obovate obtuse concave 3.5-5.5 mm imperceptibly nerved; petals (of ser. Bacillares) yellow, puberulent dorsally along and sometimes between veins, very slightly graduated, the longest (abaxial) 13-17.5 mm; androecium functionally 7-merous; filaments either glabrous or puberulent, (1.5-) 1.8-3 mm or one of the 3 abaxial longer than the rest and 3-4 mm; anthers glabrous or minutely puberulent distally, differentiated into 4 median slightly incurved truncate 3-4.3 mm with divaricate 2-porose beak 0.2-0.45 mm and 3 abaxial slightly more incurved 2.6-3.8(-4.2) mm with porrect beak 0.5-0.8 mm; ovary densely strigulose-pilosulous, the short glabrescent style gently incurved but not dilated, 0.35-0.6 mm diam below the minute stigma, the orifice ±0.2-0.25 mm diam; ovules (38-)40-60.

    Pod (little known) apparently exactly that of C. insularis.—Collections: 38.

    Scrub thickets, hedgerows and coppiced woodland, ascending into montane rainforest in the central mountains, 100-1650 m, widely dispersed over Jamaica; apparently disjunct and highly localized in centr. Costa Rica (San Jose), in Cordillera Oriental in n. Colombia (e. Magdalena and Norte de Santander) and Cordillera Costanera in n. Venezuela (near common boundaries of Aragua, Miranda and Distrito Federal), but the extra-Jamaican populations known only in flower and possibly not conspecific.—Fl. (V-)VII-XII(-III).

    Very closely resembling S. quinquangulata except for the short pod in which it mimics the smaller-leaved S. insularis, vicariant on Cuba. On Jamaica the leafstalk may bear a gland between each pair of pulvinules or only between the lower ones. The few Venezuelan and Colombian specimens that, following Bentham, we provisionally accept as S. viminea lack fruits which alone can prove them conspecific; and the same holds true for the one record (Skutch 2980, K, MO, NY) from Costa Rica. All these continental populations have uniglandular leafstalks, and the South American ones in this and general habit closely resemble sympatric S. oxyphylla, from which they seem different only in the straight primary axis of inflorescence and relatively few (not over 60) ovules. The plant from Manaus, Brazil (Spruce 1272) referred by Bentham (1870, p. 100) to Cassia viminea represents the small-leaved local population of S. quinquangulata mentioned under that heading.