Cassia mimosoides L.

Leguminosae

Common names

Artillery plant; five-leaf cassia (Australia).

An exceedingly variable, prostrate to erect legume up to 1.5 m high, usually annual, sometimes with stems becoming woody above ground level and enabling the plant to perenniate. Stems variable, usually puberulent with short curved hairs, sometimes more or less densely clothed with longer spreading hairs. Leaves linear to linear-oblong, more or less parallel-sided, 0.6 to 10 cm long, 0.4 to 1.5 cm . Gland usually at or near the top of the petiole, sessile, normally orbicular or nearly so, disk shaped when dry, 0.4 to 1 mm in diameter. Rachis glandular, serrate or crenate-crested along the upper side. Leaflets sessile, in 16 to 76 pairs, obliquely oblong to oblong-elliptic or linear-oblong, 2.5 to 8 (2 to 9) mm long, 0.5 to 1.25 (1.9) mm wide, acute or subacute and shortly mucronate, glabrous or nearly so. Midrib somewhat eccentric, lateral nerves obscure to prominent beneath. Inflorescence supra-axillary or sometimes axillary, one- to three-flowered. Pedicels 0.3 to 2.5 (3.0) cm long, usually shortly puberulent, sometimes spreading hairy. Petals yellow, obovate 4 to 13 mm long, 2 to 9 mm wide. Pods linear to linear-oblong, (sometimes 1.5 but usually 3.5 to 8 cm long); 3.5 mm wide, usually adpressed hairy. Seeds brown, more or less rhombic, 2 to 3 mm long, 1 to 2 mm wide (Brennan, 1967).

The species as a whole is widespread in the tropics of the Old World and has been recorded from the Americas, but this needs confirmation. The range of variation is wide but cannot be clearly linked to either geographic origins or the effect of a hybrid swarm. At present it is simply divided into seven unnamed groups.
Group A = C. mimosoides L. var. telfairiana Hook. is from Mauritius and the Seychelles, with closely related plants in the Sudan and the Congo . Grows from 0 to 1 370 m in altitude.
Group B is from the Congo, the Sudan, Mozambique, Malawi, Zambia, Angola and southern Africa. Grows at altitudes from 900 to 1 500 m.
Group C is recorded only from Zanzibar, between sea level and 550 m.
Group D only from north-western Kenya, between 1 680 and 1 740 m.
Group E is from the Sudan, the Congo, Mozambique, Zimbabwe and the Transvaal, and is closely related to plants in Nigeria, Côte d'Ivoire, Mali and Madagascar between 470 and 1 550 m.
Group F = var. glabriuscula Ghesq., and is widespread in tropical Africa from the Gambia to Nigeria and the Sudan and southwards to Angola and Natal; it is also found in Asia from India to Australia.
Group G occurs in Sierra Leone, Liberia, the Congo, Eritrea(?), the Sudan, Mozambique, Zambia and Angola, and also in India between 0 and 2 110 m. It resembles C. capensis Thunb. var. humifusa Ghesq. (Brennan, 1967).C

Brennan (1967).

Usually found in clearings in forests, forest margins, wooded grasslands, grasslands, cultivated and waste places, sandy river beds, lake and seashores from 0 to 2 740 m. It is particularly suited to moist places. In the Sudan, it is common on sandy soils (Andrews, 1952) but in Queensland, Australia, it can be one of the most abundant legumes on the black earths of the Darling Downs (Diatloff, 1967b).

Generally only a short-lived annual. There are variations, in Japan, in flowering times of collections from different areas, those from cold areas being less bulky and flowering earlier (Sekizuka, 1960). In Japan, it has been tested as a companion crop for sowing early in the season in rice paddies for forage (Kawatake et al., 1959).
In Australia and Japan it is not particularly bulky, yields of only 230 to 510 kg./ha being recorded (Sekizuka, 1960), but it has some pasture value where it occurs naturally. It is not very palatable, however.
It nodulates with the cowpea cross-inoculation group (Bowen, 1956). It is also nodulated in the field under good conditions but not under exceptionally wet or dry conditions (Diatloff, 1967b).