Craibia

Abstract: Although specimens of the plant here treated as Craibia zimmermannii were collected as early as 1822 by Forbes at Delagoa Bay, the genus was not described till 1911, when Harms & Dunn (Journ. Bot. 49, Io6) named it in honour of W. G. Craib, at that time Assistant for India at Kew, later Professor of Botany at Aberdeen. The species placed in the new genus had previously been assigned to Dalbergia, Lonchocarpus, Millettia, Pterocarpus, Scheflerodendron and, in MS., Pongamia. Since 1911 Craibia has been maintained by all students of Tropical African plants, though the only botanist who has studied the Tropical African Leguminosae as a whole, E. G. Baker (1929) writes 'The affinities of this genus are with Milletia, from which it is doubtfully distinguished by its alternate-pinnate or unifoliolate leaves; with Schefferodendron, which is separated by its leaflets glandular below; and with Lonchocarpus, which has different pods.' Other botanists have merely repeated E. G. Baker's distinction, without adducing further reasons for keeping up Craibia as a genus, in spite of the fact that in some Papilionaceous genera, such as Dalbergia, alternate or opposite leaflets are found haphazardly among the species, while in others, such as Indigofera, this character is regarded as of merely sectional or subsectional value. Furthermore Millettia psilopetala Harms often has subalternate leaflets and on this account was described in 1925 by De Wildeman as Craibia bequaertii, both names being kept up by E. G. Baker. It therefore seems necessary to examine the differences between Craibia and Millettia more closely.