Diadelphia Decandria.
Generic Character.
Cal. 2-labiatus: 2/3: dentibus superioribus connatis. Vexillum vix alis longius. Legumen isthmis interceptum.
Specific Character and Synonyms.
CORONILLA Emerus fruticosa, pedunculis subtrifloris, corollarum unguibus calyce triplo longioribus, caule angulato. Linn. Syst. Vegetab. ed. 14. Murr. p. 669. Ait. Kew. v. 3. p. 57.
COLUTEA siliquosa s. scorpioides major. Bauh. Pin. p. 1046.
Authors have given to this plant the name of Scorpion Senna, its seed-vessels, from their slender and jointed appearance, bearing some resemblance to the tail of a scorpion.
It is a native of France and Germany, and a very old inhabitant of our gardens, having been cultivated by Gerard in 1596; it is of low and slow growth: there is a shrub of it in the Apothecaries Garden, Chelsea, which grew there in the time of Miller, and which now is not more than five feet high.
In the nurseries we have observed two varieties of it, one in which the flowers have been tinged with bright red inclining to orange and which is by far the most common, the other with flowers wholly yellow, scarcely worth cultivating.