Citation: Domin, Biblthca Bot. 89, 2:739 (1926).

Synonymy: Not Applicable

Common name: Native lucerne.

Description:
Prostrate, annual perhaps biennial or a short-lived perennial, with several radiating finally ascending herbaceous aromatic 10-50cm long stems, pubescent with strigose brown and white hairs; leaves long-petiolate, 2-7 cm long, with 3 petiolulate rhomboid-ovate or rhomboid-lanceolate leaflets, the median one on a 5-7 mm long petiolule, largest, 1-4 x 0.5-1.5 cm, irregularly denticulate, with black dots, glabrescent above, underneath with white appressed strigulose hairs mostly confined to the veins; stipules lanceolate, to 5 mm long, thin-leathery, basally striate, slightly pubescent all over with brown strigose hairs more on the margins.

Inflorescence a 2-6 cm long raceme, rhachis 1-2 cm long, densely 5-20-flowered, peduncles filiform, 5-40 x 0.5-1 mm, densely pubescent, shorter or longer than the rhachis; bract ovate-acuminate, to 3 mm long, thin-leathery, with a pubescence of long more or less dense strigose hairs; calyx cylindric-ovate, c. 4.5 mm long, on a short hairy pedicel, covered with more or less dense brown and white sericeous-strigose extrorse stout acuminate to 1 mm long hairs, green-leathery, with 10 distinct veins, 5 ending in acute tips, spotted with distinct ovate yellow-brown glands; teeth of the same height, upper 4 lanceolate, the lowest 1 triangular, the longest of all and longer than the tube; petals white, c. 1 mm shorter than the calyx and hidden in it; standard on a short claw, orbicular-cuneate, c. 3.5 x c. 2 mm; wings shorter, on a long claw, obovate, auriculate; keel shortest, clavate, obovate, purple-dotted terminally.

Pod inserted, irregularly elliptic-acute, 2.5 x 1.5 mm, laterally compressed, dotted all over with wart-like glands, pubescent with white strigose hairs more on the suture, indehiscent; seed reniform, light-brown.

Image source: fig. 320A in J.P. Jessop and H.R. Toelken Ed. 1986. Flora of South Australia (4th edn).

Distribution:  on sandy plains.   W.Aust.; N.T.; Qld; N.S.W.;. Conservation status: native Flowering time: Aug. — Sept.

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

Biology: No text

Taxonomic notes: Shows similarities with P. patens in inflorescence but the long rough strigose hairs on the calyx differ from the villous hairs on the latter.

Author: Not yet available