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Electronic Flora of South Australia species Fact Sheet

Family: Fabaceae
Bossiaea walkeri

Citation: F. Muell., Fragm. Phyt. Aust. 2:120 (1861).

Synonymy: Not Applicable

Common name: Cactus pea, cactus bossiaea.

Description:
Glabrous leafless shrub to 2 m high, lower stems cylindric; ultimate branches flattened into cladodes 3-8 (rarely 10) mm wide, rigid, glabrous, smooth, often narrowly winged, glaucous, notched at the nodes where the scaly bracts are seated; leaves commonly lacking, if developed broadly elliptic to more or less orbicular, 15-20 mm long, glaucous, with prominent reticulate venation; bracts distichous, 6-8, ovate, 0.5-1.5 mm long, the inner larger than the outer, brown, scarious, ciliate.

Flowers usually solitary, large, to 20 mm long, in lateral notches on glabrous 2-5 mm long pedicels; bracteoles ovate, obtuse, c. 3 mm long, scarious, ciliate, at the base of the pedicel, caducous; calyx campanulate, c. 10 mm long, glabrous except for the ciliate margins, reddish-brown; upper 2 teeth rounded, expanded into an upper lip and united to the middle; lower 3 narrower and half the size of the upper teeth and shorter than the tube; standard lamina suborbicular, c. 15 mm across, slightly notched on the darker claw, light-red, clasping the wings and keel; wings longer than the standard, oblong-lanceolate, obtuse, auriculate, on short claws, red; keel longest, oblong-ovate on a short claw, slightly deeper red; ovary stipitate, linear, glabrous except for a few hairs along the sutures, c. 20-ovulate; style filiform, gently recurred, with a terminal stigma.

Pod linear, on a stipe shorter than the calyx, to 60 x to 10 mm, flat with slightly thickened sutures, glaucous, finally reddish-brown.

image of FSA2_Bossiaea_wal.jpg Bossiaea walkeri twig and flower.
Image source: fig 372d in Jessop J.P. & Toelken H.R. (Ed.) 1986. Flora of South Australia (4th edn).

Published illustration: Costermans (1981) Trees and plants of south-eastern Australia, p. 195.

Distribution:  Mainly on sandy flats or dunes.

S.Aust.: NW, NU, GT, EP, MU.   W.Aust.; N.S,W,; Vic.

Conservation status: native

Flowering time: July — Oct.


SA Distribution Map based
on current data relating to
specimens held in the
State Herbarium of South Australia

Biology: No text

Author: Not yet available


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