Plants of South Eastern New South Wales

Podolobium alpestre

Flowers and leaves. Photographer Chris Clarke, Mt Buffalo National Park, Vic

Flowering branch. Photographer Don Wood, Badja State Forest, north east of Cooma

Flowering branch. Photographer Don Wood, Namadgi National Park, ACT

Common name

Alpine shaggy pea

Family

Fabaceae

Where found

Forest, woodland, and alpine herbfields, usually at higher altitudes. Kosciuszko National Park, the mountains to the north, ACT, tablelands, and the ranges. Mostly south of the Hume Highway.

Notes

Shrub to 1.3 m tall or sprawling. Young stems hairy, later becoming hairless. Leaves opposite each other or in irregular whorls of 3, 1-5 cm long, about 3-14 mm wide. tips mucronate, sometimes curved down, margins curved down, upper surface reticulate and becoming hairless, lower surface paler and sparsely hairy to hairless, stipules gradually tapering to fine tips, 1.5–3 mm long. Flowers pea shaped, 9-15 mm long, with 5 petals, 2 joined together to form the keel, yellow to orange with red markings, the keel sometimes red. Flowers in clusters. Flowers Spring-Summer. Pods shaggy hairy.

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=Podolobium~alpestre  (accessed 22 January, 2021)