Plants of South Eastern New South Wales
Swainsona recta
Common name
Small purple pea, Mountain swainson-pea
Family
Fabaceae
Where found
Dry forest, woodland, grassy areas, and rocky slopes. ACT and nearby.
Notes
Perennial herb to 0.3 m tall. Stems sparsely hairy, the hairs attached to the stems at their base or almost at their base and sticking out from the stems (needs a hand lens or a macro app on your phone/tablet to see). Leaves 3-6 cm long, compound, with 5-13 leaflets, each 1-2.5 cm long, about 1 mm wide, upper surface hairless, lower surface sparsely hairy, tips long-tapering, usually pointed, sometimes narrowly blunt to notched. Flowers 4-11 mm long, pea shaped, with 5 petals, 2 joined together to form the keel, mauve, pink, purple, or red, with whitish markings, or whitish, in clusters of 6 to more than 25 flowers. Calyx teeth usually shorter than the calyx tube. Flowers Spring to early Summer. Plants die back after flowering.
Endangered Australia. Endangered NSW. Provisions of the NSW Biodiversity Conservation Act 2016 No 63 relating to the protection of protected plants generally also apply to plants that are a threatened species.
Endangered ACT. All native plants on unleased land in the ACT are protected.
Endangered Vic. Listed in the Flora and Fauna Guarantee Act, Vic.
NSW Department of Environment & Heritage Threatened Species profile: http://www.environment.nsw.gov.au/threatenedSpeciesApp/profile.aspx?id=10782 (accessed 8 January 2021)
PlantNET description: http://plantnet.rbgsyd.nsw.gov.au/cgi-bin/NSWfl.pl?page=nswfl&lvl=sp&name=Swainsona~recta (accessed 8 January 2021)
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