Stickpea

Calliandra houstoniana is a shrub or small tree in the legume family (Fabaceae, subfamily Mimosoideae), native to Mexico and Central America. Plants typically reach 2-5 meters in height with slender, sometimes scrambling branches and finely pubescent young shoots. The leaves are alternate, bipinnately compound, with 1-15 pairs of pinnae, each bearing 10-50 pairs of small oblong leaflets only 4-12 mm long that are sensitive to touch and fold at night. The strikingly ornamental inflorescences are dense, hemispherical to globose heads of flowers in which the long, brilliantly colored stamens (red, pink, or occasionally white) dominate, projecting 3-5 cm beyond the small inconspicuous corollas to give the characteristic powderpuff appearance. Pods are linear-oblong, 6-12 cm long, flattened, with thickened margins; they dehisce elastically from the apex, twisting back to release the seeds. The species occurs in tropical dry to moist forest, often in disturbed margins, savannas, and roadsides.