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Electronic Flora of South Australia species Fact Sheet

Family: Fabaceae
Dillwynia sericea

Citation: Cunn. in B. Field, Geogr. Mem. N.S. W. 347 (1825).

Synonymy: D. floribunda sensu J. Black, Fl. S. Aust. 303 (1924) & 444 (1898), non Smith (1805).

Common name: Showy parrot-pea.

Description:
Tall erect heath-like shrub with pubescent slender but stiff branches; buds enclosed in brown bracts; leaves filiform, 5-20 x less than 1 mm, straight, rather rigid, minutely tuberculate or scabrid-hairy, margins involute to grooved above, subacute and mucronate, on short thick wrinkled pedicels less than 0.5 mm long.

Flowers 6-10 mm long, single, paired or few to many, axillary, subsessile or on pedicels to 1 mm long (if few the pedicel short, stout, less than 1 mm long), in long leafy racemes along the apical parts of the branches resembling a dense leafy spike; bracts broad-ovate, c. 2.5 mm long, brown, leathery, white-pubescent especially on the margins, caducous; bracteoles absent; calyx 4-6 mm long, gradually contracted into a distinct turbinate base, white-pubescent, lobes triangular, short, heavily ciliate or short-pubescent on the margins; the upper 2 longer, united higher up and falcate; standard nearly twice as long as the calyx, transverse-elliptic, retuse, often wider than long, apricot-coloured distally, red centrally, wings shorter, oblanceolate, reddish; keel shortest, c. 5 mm long, obtuse.

Pod sessile, scarcely exceeding the calyx, obovate, c. 5 x c. 3.5 mm, globose, brown, white-pubescent; seeds 2, reniform, c. 1.5 mm long, dark-brown, reticulate.

image of FSA2_Dillwynia_ser.jpg Dillwynia sericea, twig and legume.
Image source: fig 358d in Jessop J.P. & Toelken H.R. (Ed.) 1986. Flora of South Australia (4th edn).

Published illustration: Cunningham et al. (1982) Plants of western New South Wales, p. 392.

Distribution:  S.Aust.: MU, YP, SL, KI, SE.   Qld; N.S.W.; Vic.; Tas.

Conservation status: native

Flowering time: Aug. — Dec.


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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