Bossiaea arenicola


Bossiaea arenicola is a species of flowering plant in the family Fabaceae and is endemic to a far north Queensland. It is a shrub or small tree with broadly elliptic to more or less round leaves, and yellow and pale greenish flowers.

Description

Bossiaea arenicola is a shrub or tree that typically grows to a height of up to about. The leaves are elliptic to more or less round, long and wide on a petiole long with brown stipules about long at the base. The flowers are borne on short side shoots on a pedicel long with a single bract long. The sepals are and joined at the base forming a tube with the two upper lobes triangular long and the lower three lobes long. The standard petal is yellow, up to long, the wings long and the keel pale greenish yellow and about the same length as the standard. Flowering occurs from April to June and the fruit is an oblong to elliptic pod about long.

Taxonomy

Bossiaea arenicola was first formally described in 1991 by James Henderson Ross in the journal Muelleria from specimens collected on the track to the McIvor River on Cape York Peninsula. The specific epithet means "sand inhabitant".

Distribution and habitat

This bossiaea grows on sand dunes in heath and shrubland from the tip of Cape York Peninsula to near Cooktown.