Identification of Aeschynomene species

[Piet Stoffelen]

I'm posting this question for Mr. Ivan Hoste.  Please 'reply' to
ivan.hoste at br.fgov.be

Ivan Hoste wrote:

"In October 1999, while botanizing in Waarschoot (Belgium, prov. of
Oost-Vlaanderen), I found a single specimen of a plant I could not
identify. The plant was not yet flowering and grew along a maize field;
just a little further along the road I found a number of birdseed
aliens. I don’t know how this non-European adventive species arrived in
this area.

I uprooted the plant and placed it in one of the greenhouses of the
National Botanic Garden of Belgium (Meise, BR), where the slender plant
reached a height of over 1 m. Some weeks later I had a number of flowers

and just two ripe fruits.

With the help of a collegue, finding out that the plant belongs to the
genus Aeschynomene apparently was the easy bit, but I was unable to put
a species name on the specimen. Naming the plant is all the more
difficult because nothing can be said with certainty about the part of
the globe where it comes from.

Could anyone give me a hint to find the correct name of the plant?

A number of scans of the dried specimen are available on the net:

 http://www.br.fgov.be/tmp/ivan.html  (website BR, National Botanic
Garden of Belgium).

The scan of the separate flowers concerns flowers that have been
preserved in alcohol; the real colors of the flowers can be seen on the
scan of the well preserved dried herbarium specimen (deep reddish
brown). The keel has hairs with a broad basal part; the same type of
hairs is also found on other parts of the plant. The length of the fruit

is circa 45 mm.

I look forward to reading some useful information on my mail:
ivan.hoste at br.fgov.be

Thanks in advance.

Yours sincerely,

Ivan Hoste.

Thanks."


--
Dr. Piet Stoffelen
National Botanic Garden of Belgium
Domein van Bouchout
B-1860 Meise
Belgium
Phone: +32-(0)2-269.39.05 ---------- Fax: +32-(0)2-270.15.67