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Nature Weekly
Short Notes on Nature Singapore

7 August 2016 | My Potted Legumes | Centro | Centrosema molle |

The Centro (Centrosema molle) in my pot finally bore fruits. When I checked on the climbers yesterday, there were 5 dark brown elongated seed pods. This harvest provided an opportunity to compare its seeds with the other 2 legumes, Butterfly Pea (Clitoria ternatea) and Phasey Bean (Macroptilium lathyroides), in my potted area that were also bearing seed pods side-by-side. I had shared some information on the 3 legumes growing at in my pots just a few months back in March. In that post, the pictures of the seeds appeared to be about the same size. In fact, they were of different sizes --- seeds of Phasey Bean were the smallest (about 3 mm long) and that of Butterfly Pea were the largest (about 6 mm long) among the three. The previous effect was due to the magnification of the pictures.

photo photo

Strangely, I had not seen any flowers from the Centro but seed pods were appearing. The thick layer of leaves made it difficult to see any young pod, which was also green in colour. The number of seeds in the 3 seed pods were 6 (Butterfly Pea), 11 (Centro) and 18 (Phasey Bean) respectively. Centro had the darkest seed pods while that of the Butterfly Pea was the broadest of the three. Both seed pods of Centro and Butterfly Pea had a long narrow extension at their tips.

The potted area along my balcony had become relatively crowded with no space for any new plant. Something had to go if I wanted to grow something new. It is hard to decide especially all of them seemed to be of some interest to me.

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