Mucuna
(its Brazilian name). SYNS. Carpopogon, Macroceratides, Negretia, and Stizolobium. Including Macranthus. ORD. Leguminosae. A genus comprising about twenty-two species of herbs, or tall or rarely short and erect twining shrubs, chiefly inhabiting tropical Asia and America, a few tropical African, and one from the Fiji Islands. Flowers purple, red, or greenish-yellow, showy, in axillary racemes. Leaves pinnate, trifoliolate, often stipellate. The species are but rarely seen under cultivation, except in botanic gardens. They are strong-growing climbers, requiring to be planted out in good loam, in some warm house, and the long shoots trained near the glass. Propagated by cuttings of half-ripened young wood, inserted under a bell glass, in bottom heat; or by seeds. The pods of M. pruriens and M. prurita afford the Cowage, Cowhage, or Cow-itch of the Materia Medica.
M. imbricata (imbricated). fl. large; vexillum of corolla not half the length of the keel, varying from dirty white to purple; wings dark purple, shorter than the keel; keel cylindrical nearly to the end, where it curves upwards and terminates in a sharp spiny point; racemes large, thyrsiform, drooping, having the appearance of bunches of black grapes. Legume 3in. to 4in. long, about 1in. broad, bent at the extremities, covered with white hairs, which turn black in drying. l. ternate, trifoliolate, nearly glabrous above, silvery (with hairs) and prominently veined beneath. India. Stove. (B. M. 4945, under name of M. prurita. The true M. prurita is altogether a different plant.)