cassia

noun

• 1a tree, shrub, or herbaceous plant of the pea family, native to warm climates. Cassias yield a variety of products, including fodder, timber, and medicinal drugs, and many are cultivated as ornamentals.

  [modern Latin]

  • Genus Cassia, family Leguminosae: many species, including C. fistula, which provides much of the commercially produced senna

• 2 (also cassia bark) the aromatic bark of an eastern Asian tree, yielding an inferior kind of cinnamon that is sometimes used to adulterate true cinnamon.

  [from Latin, probably denoting the wild cinnamon, via Greek from Hebrew qĕṣī῾āh]

  • Cinnamomum aromaticum, family Lauraceae