Poinciana

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Read about Poinciana in the Standard Cyclopedia of Horticulture 

Poinciana (M. de Poinci, governor of the Antilles in the seventeenth century). Leguminosae. Small mostly broad-topped unarmed trees, with large and very showy flowers; one of the most conspicuous trees in southern Florida and the American tropics.

Leaves bipinnate with numerous small fits, and with no stipels and inconspicuous stipules: fls. very showy, orange or scarlet, in large corymbose racemes, not papilionaceous, the 5 petals clawed and eroded or even nmbriate on the margin, the stamens 10 and free and exserted: fr. long and flat.—There are 2 or 3 species of Poinciana, all native to the oriental tropics. The genus has been confounded with Caesalpinia, but the calyx-segms. are valvate, whereas they are strongly imbricate (or overlapping) in Caesalpinia. The P. pulcherrima, known as "Barbados pride" and "bird-of paradise flower," is Caesalpinia pulcherrima; P. Gil- liesii is C. Gilliesii. P. elata, Linn., native to India, Arabia, and Trop. Afr., is planted in the Old World, but is not in the American trade. It reaches a height of 20- 30ft., with the petals scarcely exserted beyond the calyx.


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