Bio Diversity Park

Common Name : Golden senna, Sulphur Cassia

Hindi Name : मोठा तरवड | Scientific Name : Senna sulfurea
Family : Fabaceae
Uses : S. surratensis is cultivated as a shade tree and as a hedge and ornamental plant; its leaves are used locally in traditional medicine, and its bark is said to be medicinal. In Southeast Asia, its young leaves are cooked and eaten as a vegetable, and in the Philippines, it is often used in teak plantations as a shade tree and hedge plant. The roots are used to treat gonorrhoea, the leaves for dysentery, and the flowers as a general purgative.
Native: Indian Subcontinent to Indo-China, N. Australia
General Description:

Sulphur Cassia is a large shrub or small tree. Young shoots are hairy, later hairless. Leaves are 15-30 cm, with a club-shaped gland 1-2 mm on rachis between each of lowest 2 pairs of leaflets. Stipules are cadu­cous, linear. Leaf-stalks are 3.5-6.5 cm. Leaflet stalks are about 3 mm. Leaflets are 4-6 pairs, usually 5 pairs, abaxially farina-white, greenish above, ovate or elliptic, 3.5-10 × 2.5-4 cm, base broadly cuneate or subrounded, apex obtusely rounded or inconspicu­ously emarginate. Flower racemes occur in axils of leaves in upper part of branches. Peduncles are 3-10 cm; rachis 1-6 cm; bracts ovate, 3-8 mm, apex acute, finally reflexed. Flower-stalks are 1-3 cm. Sepals green to reddish brown, unequal, outer 2 suborbicular, about 3 mm in diameter, inner 3 obovate, 6-9 mm. Petals are bright yellow (drying orange or pinkish brown), ovate or obovate, 1.5-2.5 cm, 5-veined, clawed. Stamens are 10, all fertile, with short, thick fila­ments, lowest 2 with longer filaments; anthers subequal, opening by short, apical slits. Ovary hairy; style glabrous. Leg­ume glossy, flat, straight, strap-shaped, dehiscent, 12-20 × 1.2-1.8 cm, with long, slender beak on top, valves papery. Seeds 20-30, oblong-elliptic, ca. 7 × 4 mm.