Cajanus cajan (pigeonpea)

Plate 1 figs. a–h · 8 separate observations

Cajanus cajan, photographed by Patricio Cowper Coles — fig. a Patricio Cowper Coles, CC BY 4.0 / 2022-05-01 / obs. 194895679

Cajanus cajan, photographed by Maria Janeiro — fig. b Maria Janeiro, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 192595480

Cajanus cajan, photographed by Светлана Царахова — fig. c Светлана Царахова, CC0 1.0 / obs. 181792566

Cajanus cajan, photographed by Michael Meiring — fig. d Michael Meiring, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 176875924

Cajanus cajan, photographed by chiuluan — fig. f chiuluan, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 171936956

Cajanus cajan, photographed by Jacy Chen — fig. g Jacy Chen, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 174057235

Cajanus cajan, photographed by 葉子 — fig. h 葉子, CC0 1.0 / obs. 105025181

Every figure is a research-grade observation under CC0, CC BY or CC BY-SA, rehosted with the photographer’s name, the licence and the observation it came from. Photographs under a NonCommercial licence are excluded from this site and are never stored, which costs us a great many pictures and is not negotiable.

Native range 3 botanical countries

Native distribution of Cajanus cajan, after Kew’s World Checklist of Vascular Plants. Introduced, extinct and doubtful records are excluded, so this is where the plant is from, not everywhere it now grows.

Region	TDWG code	Continent
Assam	ASS	ASIA-TROPICAL
India	IND
West Himalaya	WHM

Region boundaries approximated from Natural Earth (public domain) and mapped to TDWG World Geographical Scheme for Recording Plant Distributions (WGSRPD) level-3 botanical countries (Brummitt 2001). Indicative, not the official WGSRPD geometry.

Flowering 94 in flower of 118 examined

80%

75%

83%

82%

57%

89%

92%

72%

Proportion of examined Cajanus cajan in flower, by month
Month	In flower	Examined	Share	95% interval
Jan	16	20	80%	58% to 92%
Feb	12	16	75%	51% to 90%
Mar	5	6	83%	44% to 97%
Apr	9	11	82%	52% to 95%
May	4	7	57%	25% to 84%
Jun	4	4	too few examined
Jul	1	2	too few examined
Aug	3	3	too few examined
Sep	2	2	too few examined
Oct	8	9	89%	56% to 98%
Nov	12	13	92%	67% to 99%
Dec	18	25	72%	52% to 86%

Peak flowering in Nov. Each bar is the share of Cajanus cajan observations in which someone actually recorded the reproductive state and found the plant in flower, not the raw number of flowering records. That distinction matters: people observe plants far more in spring than in winter, so a bare count of flowering records partly measures when people go outside. Dividing by the number examined removes that. 94 of 118 examined observations were in flower, every one of them research grade. The whisker on each bar is a 95% Wilson interval. 4 months have fewer than 5 examined observations, so no proportion is drawn for them. This is still a global aggregate and not a forecast for your garden: the same species flowers on different dates in different hemispheres. Where a species has fewer than 30 flowering records we do not draw this chart at all. Computed from 10.15468/dl.cgje2x.

Also published as 19 synonyms

A synonym is not an error. It is a record of botanists disagreeing, in print, about where this plant belongs. Each of these was somebody’s considered answer.

Cajanum thora Raf.
Cajanus bicolor DC.
Cajanus cajan f. bicolor (DC.) Baker f.
Cajanus cajan var. bicolor (DC.) Purseglove
Cajanus cajan var. flavus (DC.) Purseglove
Cajanus flavus DC.
Cajanus indicus Spreng.
Cajanus indicus var. bicolor (DC.) Kuntze
Cajanus indicus var. flavus Kuntze
Cajanus indicus var. maculatus Kuntze
Cajanus inodorus Medik.
Cajanus luteus Bello
Cajanus obcordifolia D.N.Singh
Cajanus pseudocajan (Jacq.) Schinz & Guillaumin
Cajanus striatus Bojer
Cytisus cajan L.
Cytisus guineensis Schumach. & Thonn.
Cytisus mollis Salisb.
Cytisus pseudocajan Jacq.

Sourcesevery claim on this page

World Flora Online Plant List. accepted name, authority, classification. CC0. Retrieved 2026-07-12.
iNaturalist. photographs and flowering annotations, CC0 / CC BY / CC BY-SA only. per photograph. Retrieved 2026-06-27.
USDA PLANTS Database. common name, checklist symbol CACA27. public domain. Retrieved 2026-07-13.
Kew, World Checklist of Vascular Plants (WCVP v16). native distribution by TDWG level-3 botanical country, and life form. CC BY 3.0. Retrieved 2026-06-04.

We publish what we can source and we say so when we cannot. This page has no care advice and no toxicity claim, because we do not yet have those from a source we can cite.