Senna italica leaves

The leaves of this Senna italica plant have their leaflet blades facing forward to the leaf tip, not up to the sky. They hinge inwards upon their very short, nearly non-existent stalks, bringing the blades near the stem over the back end of the next pair.

The leaflet is about oblong, rounded at tip and base. Forms of the plant that turn their leaflets up towards the sunlight tend to have less symmetry to their shapes than present here. Midribs and straight, ascending lateral veins are visible but not prominent.

The margins are entire, notably smooth and regular. Leaf hairiness seems to be absent. The leaf colour is glaucous, strongly blue-grey with some faint green on younger leaves.

There are four to six pairs of leaflets in each leaf of S. italica without a terminal leaflet, a shape known as paripinnate. The overall leaf length is about 10 cm (Pooley, 1998; Van Wyk and Gericke, 2000; iSpot; JSTOR; Wikipedia).