Plants of South Eastern New South Wales

Pultenaea canescens

Flowering stems. Australian Plant Image Index, photographer Rogier de Kok, Australian National Botanic Gardens, Canberra, ACT

Common name

Plumed Bush-pea

Family

Fabaceae

Where found

Dry forest, (wet) heath on sandstone, exposed sandstone ridges, and swamps. Tablelands and ranges north from Tallaganda National Park near Braidwood. Mainly in the higher Blue Mountains.

Notes

Shrub to 1.5 m tall or sprawling to prostrate. Stems hairless to hairy. Leaves alternating up the stems, 0.5-1.45 cm long, 1.5–2.9 mm wide, concave in cross section, tips pointed to blunt, margins curved to rolled upwards, both surfaces the same colour or the lower surface darker than upper surface. Flowers 8–15 mm long, pea shaped, with 5 petals, 2 joined together to form the keel. Standard petal yellow to orange with red-brown stripes on the front and back; wings and keel yellow to orange. Bracteoles with 3 teeth at the tips, papery, inserted at the base of the calyx tube. Flowers in dense leafy clusters. Flowers September to April. Pods with a tuft of hairs at the tips.

Hybrids between Pultenaea canescens and Pultenaea foliolosa have occasionally been found.

PlantNET description:  http://plantnet.rbgsyd.nsw.gov.au/cgi-bin/NSWfl.pl?page=nswfl&lvl=sp&name=Pultenaea~canescens  (accessed 2 February, 2021)

Description partly based on Kok, R.P.J. de & West, J.G., (2002) A revision of Pultenaea (Fabaceae) 1. Species with ovaries hairless and/or with tufted hairs. Australian Systematic Botany 15(1): 88-89, Fig. 3 (map)