GOLDEN-SHOWER TREE
FLOWERING

In the September 8th Newsletter I told you about the Lebbeck-Tree prettily flowering next to the village's plaza. As the Lebbeck-Tree fades another species is coming online, putting on even more of a show. It's the Golden Shower Tree, traditionally named CASSIA FISTULA but now probably sunk into the genus Senna. The twenty-ft-tall Golden Shower Tree's glory lies in its two-inch-wide, canary-yellow blossoms densely clustered in foot-long racemes, and its handsome, foot-long, dangling, pinnate leaves, as shown below:

Below you see a close-up of a flower's sexual parts. The long, slender, green, U-shaped item is the ovary -- the future legume. The other things sprouting from the blossom's center are male stamens consisting of curving, stalk-like filaments holding out baglike anthers, which open to release powdery pollen.

Stamens in this genus are different from those of most other genera in that in a single blossom they grow in very different sizes and configurations, as the picture shows. In certain closely related species some stamens are sterile, having lost their pollen- producing anthers so that now the headless filaments serve mainly as handles for visiting pollinators. Senna fistula's flowers bear ten fertile stamens, but of different sizes.

The Golden Shower Tree's fruits are attention-getting, too. They're two feet long, very slender and roundish in cross-section, like enormous string-beans, as shown below:

This is one instance when the outside world knows about the medicinal value of a plant growing here but the Maya don't. For, Golden Shower Trees are alien here, being from India. So far the Maya don't seem to know that the pod produces between its many seeds a pulp that makes an excellent laxative. In the old days when pharmacists compounded drugs from raw ingredients "Cassia pods" from this tree were a mainstay. When mature, the pods turn black.