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Electronic Flora of South Australia genus Fact Sheet

Family: Fabaceae
Dillwynia

Citation: Smith, Ann. Bot.(Koenig & Sims) 1:510 (1805).

Derivation: After L. W. Dillwyn, English Botanist, 1778-1855.

Synonymy: Not Applicable

Common name: Parrotpeas.

Description:
Heath-like shrubs; leaves simple, linear, terete, with a groove along the upper surface, or somewhat trigonous in cross section, rarely almost flat with involute margins; stipules usually absent, if present minute.

Flowers yellow or yellow and red, single, paired and axillary or a few in terminal and/or axillary racemes or corymbs; bracts small, usually caducous; bracteoles small, on the pedicels often well removed from the base of the calyx, usually soon caducous; calyx lobes 5, short or as long as the tube, often the upper 2 lobes broad, divergent and partly united into an upper lip, the base long- or short-turbinate; petals clawed; the standard broader than long; .the wings narrow; the keel usually shorter, straight or scarcely incurved; stamens 10, free; ovary shortly stipitate, pubescent, the style erect, rather thick, hooked below the apex, with a truncate thick stigma, the 2 ovules on short funicles.

Pod nearly sessile, ovate or rounded, turgid; seed arillate.

Distribution:  Endemic to Australia, with some 15 species.

Biology: No text

Key to Species:
1. Flowers 2-8 mostly in terminal pedunculate corymbs or short racemes; keel acuminate, longer than the wings or obtuse and shorter
 
2. Keel acuminate, crimson, equalling the wings; plant usually pubescent, hairs present at least on leaves and/or calyx or pedicel
D. hispida 3.
2. Keel obtuse, yellow to reddish, shorter than the wings; plant wholly glabrous or near so
D. glaberrima 2.
1. Flowers 2-8 in sessile terminal and/or lateral short racemes, or single or paired and axillary, or often in corymbs; keel obtuse, shorter than the wings
 
3. Flowers single or paired, axillary, subsessile in long leafy racemes; leaves straight, 5-20 mm long, obtuse, scabrous
D. sericea 4.
3. Flowers 2-8 or more, in terminal and/or lateral leafless short racemes or corymbs
 
4. Leaves 3-7 mm long, thick, obtuse, spreading, usually much recurved; flowers 2-5; standard brown-yellow
D. uncinata 5.
4. Leaves 5-20 mm long, more or less filiform, acute, more or less ascending, not or slightly recurved distally; flowers 3-8; standard purplish
D. cinerascens 1.

Author: Not yet available


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