Common name: Burmese Pink Cassia
Botanical name: Cassia renigera Family: Caesalpiniaceae (Gulmohar family)
Burmese Pink Cassia is an ornamental garden and roadside tree.
It is a small tree - not more than 20 feet but in May when the large, showy
flowers and tender, green leaves appear, it presents a strikingly beautiful
picture, enhanced by the varied tones of pink in each small cluster. These
clusters rise on short stems from the scars of the old leaves. At the base of
each flower stalk is a bract like a small leaf and these numerous bracts
crowded together form a long clump from which spring the downy, red stalks.
Outside, the calyx is dull red; inside, the palest green. The flowers, each
about 2 inches across are a deep pink when young, but fade almost to white.
The ten yellow stamens are in groups of three, four and three, crowned with
delicate green anthers. The longest three are curled like the letters "S" and
have a curious balloon-like swelling in the middle. The leaves, which fall in
December, leaving the tree adorned only by the long blackened pods, are up to
1 foot in length. Each bears from eight to twenty pairs of downy oblong
leaflets, rounded at the tips.
Native of dry zone of Upper Burma, now introduced into India.
| Photographed in Jamia Millia,
Delhi |
|
ntroduced
