Plants of South Eastern New South Wales

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Daviesia buxifolia

Common name

Box-leaf bitter-pea

Family

Fabacea 

Where found

Dry forest. Coast, ranges, and eastern tablelands mainly south from Bega.

Notes

Shrub to 2 m tall. Stems angular-cylindrical, ribbed, hairless. 'Leaves' alternating up the stems, 0.3-4 cm long, 3-27 mm wide, wavy, tips rounded, blunt, or rarely pointed, bases cordate to rounded, margins with minute scallops, surfaces hairless, glossy, bright green. Flowers pea shaped, with 5 petals, 2 joined together to form the keel, standard petal yellow to orange-yellow with red to brownish purple markings surrounding an intense yellow bilobed centre, about 6.5 mm long, 6.5 mm wide. Keel purple brown with a yellowish tip. Flowers in 4-7 flowered clusters, the clusters sometimes paired. Flowers Spring.

Hybridises with Daviesia latifolia and Daviesia mimosoides.

All species of Daviesia have 'leaves' that taste bitter, and hairless triangular pods.

PlantNET description:  http://plantnet.rbgsyd.nsw.gov.au/cgi-bin/NSWfl.pl?page=nswfl&lvl=sp&name=Daviesia~buxifolia (accessed 3 April 2021)

Description partly based on Crisp, M.D., Cayzer, L., Chandler, G.R. & Cook, L.G. (2017), A monograph of Daviesia (Mirbelieae, Faboideae, Fabaceae). Phytotaxa 300(1): 111-113, Fig. 6