Plants of South Eastern New South Wales

Daviesia buxifolia

Flowers and 'leaves'. Australian Plant Image Index, photographer Murray Fagg, Australian National Botanic Gardens, Canberra

Flowers and 'leaves'. Photographer Don Wood, Gnupa State Forest west of Merimbula

Shrub. Australian Plant Image Index, photographer M Crisp, south of Beechworth, Vic

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