Plants of South Eastern New South Wales
Hovea heterophylla
Common name
Creeping hovea
Family
Fabaceae
Where found
Forest, woodland, heath, and grassy sites, often on shallow stony soils. Widespread.
Notes
Shrub or perennial herb to 1 m tall, often trailing. Stems with brown, silvery brown, or grey-brown hairs. Leaves alternating up the stems, 0.6-11 cm long, 1.5-17 mm wide, margins curved to rolled down, tips usually strongly hooked, upper surface hairless, smooth, finely reticulate, lower surface sparsely to densely hairy with appressed hairs. Standard petal 6-9 mm long. Flowers pea shaped, with 5 petals, 2 joined together to form the keel, blue to pinky mauve, with darker violet to purple markings, or white, the standard petal with a yellow spot at the base. Flowers in 1-3 flowered clusters at the base of the upper leaves. Outside of the pod hairy, becoming hairless. Flowers Winter to Spring.
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=Hovea~heterophylla (accessed 19 January, 2021)
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