Machaerium
(from machaira, a sabre; in allusion to the pods ending in a sabre-shaped wing, which is longer than the fruit). ORD. Leguminosae. A genus comprising nearly sixty species of stove erect trees or tall climbing shrubs, natives of tropical America. Flowers purple, violet, or white, small or mediocre, disposed in short, side-flowering racemes, fasciculate in the axils, or in terminal crowded panicles; calyx truncate, obtuse at base, shortly toothed; standard broadly ovate or orbiculate, exappendiculate, often silky outside; wings oblong, frequently falcate; keel incurved, the petals connate at back; pedicels short, sometimes very short. Pod compressed, samara-like, indehiscent. Leaves impari-pinnate; leaflets mostly alternate, exstipellate; stipules sometimes hard-bristly; bracts small; bracteoles persistent. Some of the species are supposed to yield a part of the rosewood of commerce. Machaeriums grow well in a compost of loam and peat. Propagation may be effected by cuttings, made of the ripened wood, and inserted in sand, under a glass, in heat. The undermentioned are probably the only species introduced; they are usually, but erroneously, classed as Nissolias. Both are climbing shrubs.
M. aculeatum (prickly). fl. white; panicles short, darkly pubescent; standard silky; keel much shorter than the wings. August. l., leaflets thirty-one to forty-five, narrow-oblong, about 1/2in. long, obtuse or retuse, shining, slightly pilose beneath, coriaceous; stipules at length hard-spinescent. h. 10ft. Rio Janeiro, 1824.
M. robiniaefolium (Robinia-leaved). fl. white, disposed in axillary, many-flowered racemes, which are shorter than the leaves; keel slightly rostrate; calyx somewhat glabrous. July. l., leaflets about twenty or thirty, oblong, obtuse, mucronulate, very glabrous; stipules spinescent. h. 6ft. St. Vincent, 1824.