Podolobium ilicifolium flowers and foliage

''Podolobium ilicifolium'', commonly known as prickly shaggy-pea, is a flowering plant in the family

Fabaceae Fabaceae () or Leguminosae,International Code of Nomen ...

and grows in eastern and southern Australia. The

inflorescence In botany, an inflorescence is a group or cluster of flowers arranged on a plant's Plant stem, stem that is composed of a main branch or a system of branches. An inflorescence is categorized on the basis of the arrangement of flowers on a mai ...

is a cluster of yellow or orange pea-like flowers with red markings and shiny green, prickly foliage.

Description

''Podolobium ilicifolium'' is an upright shrub to high with more or less smooth or soft hairy stems. The leaves are arranged opposite or nearly so, oval to narrowly oval shaped, long and wide, upper surface smooth, distinctly veined, shiny, lower surface sometimes with soft hairs, margins lobed with a sharp point, on a

petiole Petiole may refer to: *Petiole (botany), the stalk of a leaf, attaching the blade to the stem *Petiole (insect anatomy) In entomology, petiole is the technical term for the narrow waist of some hymenopteran insects, especially ants, bees, and ...

about long. The inflorescences are borne in leaf axils or at the end of branches on a

pedicel Pedicle or pedicel may refer to: Human anatomy *Pedicle of vertebral arch, the segment between the transverse process and the vertebral body, and is often used as a radiographic marker and entry point in vertebroplasty and kyphoplasty procedures ...

long. The corolla is long, standard petal yellow or yellowish-orange with a reddish centre,

wings A wing is a type of fin that produces both lift and drag while moving through air. Wings are defined by two shape characteristics, an airfoil section and a planform. Wing efficiency is expressed as lift-to-drag ratio, which compares the bene ...

yellowish, and the

keel The keel is the bottom-most longitudinal structural element of a watercraft, important for stability. On some sailboats, it may have a fluid dynamics, hydrodynamic and counterbalancing purpose as well. The keel laying, laying of the keel is often ...

is red. Flowering occurs from spring to early summer and the fruit is an oval or oblong pod about long and in diameter, and may be curved or straight.Les Robinson - Field Guide to the Native Plants of Sydney, page 83

Taxonomy and naming

''Podolobium ilicifolium'' was first formally described in 1995 by

Michael Crisp Michael Douglas Crisp (born 1950) is an emeritus professor in the Research School of Biology at the Australian National University located in Canberra. In 1976, he gained a PhD from the University of Adelaide, studying long-term vegetation chan ...

and

Peter Weston Peter Weston (19 October 1943 – 5 January 2017) was a British science fiction fan from Birmingham, UK. Weston made many contributions in fan writing, fanzine editing, convention-running and in local science fiction clubs. His 1960s pseudonym ...

and the description was published in ''Advances in Legume Systematics''. The

specific epithet In Taxonomy (biology), taxonomy, binomial nomenclature ("two-term naming system"), also called binary nomenclature, is a formal system of naming species of living things by giving each a name composed of two parts, both of which use Latin gramm ...

(''ilicifolium'') means "holly leaved ".

Distribution and habitat

Prickly shaggy-pea is a common plant, found in dry or moist sclerophyll forest, often on clay or sandstone based soils in New South Wales, Queensland and Victoria.

References

{{Taxonbar, from=Q7207036 Fabales of Australia Flora of New South Wales Flora of Queensland Flora of Victoria (state) ilicifolium Taxa named by Henry Cranke Andrews