Page:Indian Medicinal Plants (Text Part 1).djvu/505

A diffuse annual herb. Root annual. Steins or rather branches, many, diffuse, hairy, from 2-4 ft. long. Leaves alternate, pinnate. Leaflets 2 pairs, oval and obovate, slightly hairy underneath. Petioles longer than the leaflets, with the base enlarged into a stem-clasping sheath with two ensiform processes. Flowers axillary, two or three together blossoming in succession, Bracts a common exterior pair to the fascicle and small proper ones to the several flowers. All are membranaceous tapering to a fine point and ciliate. Calyx with a very long, filiform, slender tube ; mouths two-parted ; the upper lip three-cleft, with the middle division emarginate ; the lower lip lanceolate, and rather longer. Corolla papilionaceous resupinate of a bright yellow colour. Vexillum round, emarginate, large in proper tun to the other petals inserted with the wings and carina partly on the base of staminiferous tube and partly on the mouth of the tube of the Calyx, wings free obliquely ovate, concave, longer than the carina which is at base two-parted ; the upper half in curved and subulate ; Filaments ten united into one fleshly tube with a groove, but opening on upper side. Anthers alternately sagittate and ovate. Germ "(ovary) ovate, lodged on the base of the sessile tube of the Calyx. Style long and slender. Stigma even with the anthers, and bearded on the inside. Legume oblong leathery, swelled at each seed, reticulated with prominent nerves, one-celled not opening spontaneously, nor are the sutures very conspicuous ; length various but in general about as thick as the little finger. Seeds from one to four, ovate, smooth, of the size of a French bean. The manner in which the young minute germ (ovary) of the plant acquires pedicels, sufficiently long to allow it to thrust itself into the ground to the depth of one, two or even three inches where it grows and ripens its seed is truly wonderful. Roxburgh further observes : " to understand the admirable economy it must be observed that the flowers are most perfectly sessile, two, three or four in the axils of ten leaves, and that the germ is lodged in the very base of the tube of the Calyx. Soon after the flower decays the germ acquires pedicels, after which it lengthens fast, it then enters the earth, and when the legume is perfectly formed, it will generally be found as deep in the earth