Annual branching herbs, mainly glandular-pubescent and exhaling a strong disagreeable odor, with whitish or yellowish flowers, and palmately compound or rarely simple leaves. Sepals 4, lanceolate, deciduous. Petals slender or clawed. Receptacle depressed, bearing a gland at the base of the ovary. Stamens 8-∞, somewhat unequal. Pod nearly or quite sessile on its pedicel, elongated, cylindric or compressed, its valves dehiscent from the summit. Seeds rugose or reticulated. [Greek, very unequal, referring to the stamens.]

A genus of about 30 species, natives of temperate and tropical regions. In addition to the following, 2 other species are found in the southern and western parts of North America. Type species: Polanisia graveolens Raf.

1. Polanisia Gravèolens Raf. Clammy-Weed

Fig. 2118

Cleome dodecandra Michx. Fl. Bor. Am. 2:

32. 1803. Not. L. 1753. Polanisia graveolens Raf. Am. Journ. Sci. 1:

378. 1819.

Viscid and glandular-pubescent, branching, 6'-18' high. Leaves 3-foliolate, slender-petioled; leaflets oblong, obtuse, entire, 6"-12" long; sepals purplish, slightly unequal; petals cuneate, clawed, deeply emar-ginate or obcordate, yellowish-white; stamens 9-12, purplish, equalling or slightly exceeding the petals; style about 1" long; pod lanceolate-oblong, slightly compressed, 1'-1 1/2' long, 3"-4" wide, slightly stipitate, rough, reticulated; seeds rough.

Sandy and gravelly shores, western Quebec to Manitoba, Maryland, Tennessee, Kansas and Colorado. Wormweed. False-mustard. Summer.

2. Polanisia Trachyspérma T. & G.. Large-Flowered Clammy-Weed

Fig. 2119

Polanisia trachysperma T. & G. Fl. N. A. 1: 669. 1840. Jacksonia trachysperma Greene, Pittonia 2: 175. 1891.

Similar to the last, but flowers twice the size (4"-6" long); style slender, 2"-3" long; stamens much exserted, often twice the length of the petals; filaments purple, conspicuous; pod slightly larger, nearly or quite sessile.

Prairies and plains, Iowa to Missouri, Texas, west to British Columbia and California. Summer.