Senna surattensis (PROSEA)

Plant Resources of South-East Asia Introduction

List of species

Senna surattensis (Burm.f.) Irwin & Barneby

Family: Leguminosae - Caesalpinioideae

Synonyms

• Cassia glauca Lamk,
• C. suffruticosa Heyne ex Roth,
• C. surattensis Burm.f.

Vernacular names

• Glaucous cassia (En)
• Indonesia: kembang kuning
• Malaysia: gelenggang
• Laos: (do:k) sake:, sak heng? (Luang Prabang)
• Thailand: khilek-ban (northern), songbadan (Central)
• Vietnam: (cây) bò cạp, muớng biển, hoè hoa.

Distribution

Indigenous to South and South-East Asia; now cultivated throughout the tropics.

Uses

Often interplanted in young teak plantations and used as a shade tree in the Philippines. It is a popular ornamental e.g. in Hawaii, Taiwan and Hong Kong, being rather insensitive to SO₂ pollution. Young leaves are cooked and eaten as a vegetable. In traditional medicine a decoction of the roots is used against gonorrhoea, the leaves against dysentery and the flowers as a purgative.

Observations

• Shrub or treelet up to 7 m tall. Young branches glabrous to puberulous.
• Leaves with 4-9 pairs of leaflets; petiole 1.5-5 cm long; rachis up to 15 cm long, with a clavate gland between the 2-4 lower pairs of leaflets; leaflets ovate to ovate-oblong, 3-10 cm × 1-5 cm, glabrous above, sparsely hairy and glacous below.
• Inflorescence an axillary raceme, 5-13 cm long, 10-20-flowered; pedicel 1-4 cm long.
• Outer sepals 2, rounded, 3-5 mm long, inner sepals 3, up to 7 mm long; petals subequal, ovate-oblong, 2-3 cm long, yellow, claw 1-3 mm long; stamens 10 with thick filaments, one 3-4 mm, others 1-2 mm long.
• Pod flat, strap-shaped, 15-20 cm × 12-18 mm, glabrous, 20-35-seeded.
• Seed 1 cm long, black, shiny.

S. surattensis does not nodulate. It favours teak forest and marshy soils, up to 300 m altitude.

Selected sources

• Backer, C.A. & Bakhuizen van den Brink Jr., R.C., 1963-1968. Flora of Java. 3 volumes. Wolters-Noordhoff, Groningen, the Netherlands. 647, 641, 761 pp.
• Burkill, I.H., 1966. A dictionary of the economic products of the Malay Peninsula. 2nd Edition. 2 volumes. Ministry of Agriculture and Co-operatives, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. 2444 pp.
• de Wit, H.C.D., 1956. The genus Cassia in Malaysia. Webbia 11: 197-292.
• Flora Malesiana (various editors), 1950-. Series 1. Volume 1, 4-. Kluwer, Dordrecht & Flora Malesiana Foundation, Leiden, the Netherlands.
• Flore du Cambodge, du Laos et du Viêt-nam [Flora of Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam] (various editors), 1960-. Volume 1-. Muséum National d'Histoire Naturelle, Laboratoire de Phanérogamie, Paris, France.
• Heyne, K., 1950. De nuttige planten van Indonesië [The useful plants of Indonesia]. 3rd Edition. 2 volumes. W. van Hoeve, the Hague, the Netherlands/Bandung, Indonesia. 261, 1450 pp.
• Lock, J.M. & Heald, J., 1994. Legumes of Indo-China: a checklist. Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, United Kingdom. 164 pp.
• Verdcourt, B., 1979. A manual of New Guinea legumes. Botany Bulletin No 11. Office of Forests, Division of Botany, Lae, Papua New Guinea. 645 pp.

Authors

• M.S.M. Sosef & L.J.G. van der Maesen