Plants of South Eastern New South Wales
Comesperma retusum
Common name
Mountain milkwort, Purple milkwort
Family
Polygalaceae
Where found
Wet heath and swamps. Ranges, tablelands, ACT, the mountains to the west, and Kosciuszko National Park. Rarely coastal or Western Slopes.
Notes
Shrub to 1.6 m high. Stems pinkish, hairless, smooth to covered with minute warts. Older stems marked with leaf scars. Leaves alternating up the stems or crowded, 0.5–1.5 cm long, 2–4 mm wide, both surfaces the same colour, leaves thick, margins flat, tips blunt or with a small mucro. Flowers with 3 petals in the middle of the flower, the largest looking like the keel of a pea flower, and 2 coloured sepals that look like the wings of a pea flower. Flowers purple- or lilac-pink or magenta, sometimes white. Keel tips yellow, greenish, or dark. Wing sepals 2–8 mm long. Flowers clustered. Flowers September–March. Seed cases with a narrow wing.
All native plants on unleased land in the ACT are protected.
PlantNET description: http://plantnet.rbgsyd.nsw.gov.au/cgi-bin/NSWfl.pl?page=nswfl&lvl=sp&name=Comesperma~retusum (accessed 1 April 2021)
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