Common Name: anil falso

Duration: Perennial

Nativity: Native

Lifeform: Shrub

General: Shrub, subshrub 10-300 cm tall with erect to decumbent stems, with glabrate to hispid branches.

Leaves: Odd-pinnate with glabrate to sericeous with 3-27 leaflets per leaf, these 10-100 mm long, 3-50 mm wide, narrowly to widely elliptic, glabrate to strigose above, pilose or tomentose below, terminal leaflets larger than lateral ones, the apex rounded to acuminate, plane margins with stipules 3-12 mm long.

Flowers: Racemose inflorescence with rachis 0.5-30 mm long with up to 30 nodes, flowers on pedicels 1.5-8 mm long, hispid to silky hairs, the calyx rounded at base, silky to hispid hairs, tube 2-3 mm long, lobes 2-11 mm long, corolla banners whitish to pinkish yellow, veins often reddish, blade 5-12 mm long, 5-15 mm wide, the wings 5-12 mm long, whitish to yellowish.

Fruits: Pods 3-9.5 mm long, 2.5-7 mm wide, glabrous to villous or woolly with straight margins.

Ecology: Found in oak woodlands or open sites from 3,000-6,000 ft (914-1829 m); flowers sporadically in March-June and from July-September with the summer rains.

Distribution: Ranges from southeastern Arizona south to central America and into the Carribean.

Notes: Lavin 1988 writes that this is the most widespread and morphologically variable species in the genus, with its variability often a consequence of environmental factors. Ours are generally of the var. sericea, as no other varieties reach the United States, distinguished by being erect with silky to hispid hairs and the under surface of the leaves being pilose.

Ethnobotany: Unknown

Etymology: Coursetia is named for George Louis Marie Dumont de Courset (1746-1824), a French botanist, while caribea refers to the Caribbean, where its type is found.

Synonyms: None

Editor: SBuckley, 2011