Family

Fabaceae

Distribution

Known from Mt Bell and Scott Gorge, west Kimberley, W.A.

Description

Shrub to 40 cm high, erect. Branchlets pilose with white hairs to 1 mm long. Stipules setaceous, 3–4.5 (–6) mm long, spreading, yellowish. Phyllodes 14–18 per whorl, erect, somewhat flattened adaxially, 5–9 mm long, with an oblique to almost uncinate mucro 0.3–0.5 mm long, pilose with ascending to spreading white hairs. Peduncles 14–17 mm long, pilose with spreading white hairs that are more flexuose than on vegetative parts. Heads 15–20-flowered. Flowers 5-merous; calyx 0.8–1 mm long, divided for c. half length into triangular obtuse lobes, not or obscurely striate, glabrous; corolla lobes obscurely striate, pilose. Pods on stipe 2–3 mm long, linear, flat but raised over seeds, 1.5–4 cm long, 4–4.5 mm wide, brown, glabrous, not viscid; margins slightly thickened. Seeds 2–8 per pod, longitudinal, obliquely elliptic, 3.5 mm long, black; pleurogram open.

Phenology

Flowers May.

Habitat

Grows in red-brown clay over granite, under Livistona palms near creek and on rocky slopes in savannah–spinifex association.

Specimens

W.A.: Mt Bell, J.R.Maconochie 226 (CANB, DNA); Scott Gorge, M.J.Sands 4768 (K, PERTH).

Notes

Closely related to A. lycopodiifolia in its long mucro of the phyllode, hairy corolla and pod with longitudinal seeds. The long, setaceous stipules are especially distinctive. It may be distinguished further by the more numerous phyllodes in the whorl, obscurely striate calyx with triangular lobes, and shortly stipitate pod. Sometimes resembles A. claviseta. At MEL there is a collection labelled ‘near Cambridge Gulf, [W.A.], 1887, W.J.O’Donnell’, but this is probably a generalised locality.

FOA Reference

Data derived from Flora of Australia Volumes 11A (2001), 11B (2001) and 12 (1998), products of ABRS, ©Commonwealth of Australia

Author

A.S.George