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Electronic Flora of South Australia species Fact Sheet

Family: Fabaceae
Indigofera leucotricha

Citation: E. Pritzel, Reprium nov. Spec. Regni veg. 15:357 (1918).

Synonymy: Indigofera brevidens

Common name: Silver indigo.

Description:
A small intricate greyish erect or spreading shrub to 1 m high, with young branches white-tomentose; leaves 1.5-4 cm long; leaflets 7-17, subsessile, obovate-truncate, cuneate, 2.5-10 x 2-5 mm, greyish with a white appressed indumentum, often conduplicate, with a recurved mucro; stipules 1-2 mm long, hard, often recurved and spinescent, brown, with appressed short hairs, persistent.

Inflorescence mostly a condensed raceme, about as long as or longer than the leaves, several- to 15-flowered, peduncle covered with rusty or white hairs; bract triangular to lanceolate, 1-2 mm long, leathery, pubescent, caducous or not; flowers on pubescent pedicels 0.5-1 mm, at first erect, pendulous in fruit and on pedicels 2-3 mm long; calyx oblique, to 3 mm long, with dark-brown hairs, teeth unequal, the lowest being the longest, as long as the tube, finally open, truncate at the base after anthesis; petals purple to red or pink; standard orbicular, 7-9 mm long, shortly clawed, reflexed; densely pubescent with white or rusty hairs on the back, glabrous underneath and palmately veined; wings shorter, obtuse; keel acute, equalling the wings, hairy on the lower part.

Pod cylindrical, 18-35 x 3-4mm, with dense rusty and white indumentum, 5-10-seeded; seeds cuboid, c. 1.5 ram, dark-brown, dull.

image of FSA2_Indigofera_leu.jpg
Image source: fig. 308B in J.P. Jessop and H.R. Toelken Ed. 1986. Flora of South Australia (4th edn).

Published illustration: Cunningham et al. (1982) Plants of western New South Wales, p. 398.

Distribution:  mostly on hillslopes and ridges.

S.Aust.: LE, EA.   W.Aust.; N.T.;.

Conservation status: native

Flowering time: June — 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 I. basedowii from which it differs in the small triangular lanceolate leathery bracts and shorter calyx.

Author: Not yet available


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