Broome raintree

Albizia lebbeck, known variously as siris, lebbeck, woman's-tongue tree, Broome raintree and in Sanskrit shirisha, is a medium to large deciduous tree in the family Fabaceae native to the Indian subcontinent and tropical Asia and now widely naturalised across the tropics. It reaches 18 to 30 metres in height with a broad spreading crown, grey to brownish bark and bipinnate leaves bearing two to four pairs of pinnae, each with several pairs of oblong leaflets that fold at night. From spring into summer it produces showy globose heads of fragrant flowers with numerous long greenish-white to pale yellow stamens, giving a powder-puff appearance. The fruit is a flat, papery, straw-coloured pod 15 to 30 centimetres long containing several seeds that rattle audibly in the wind, the source of the name woman's-tongue tree. It tolerates a wide range of soils and is widely planted for shade, fodder, timber and as an ornamental street tree, and naturalises readily in disturbed tropical and subtropical sites.