Bossiaea bombayensis


Bossiaea bombayensis, commonly known as bombay bossiaea, is a species of flowering plant in the family Fabaceae and is endemic to a small area of New South Wales. It is an erect shrub with flattened cladodes, small, scale-like leaves, and pea-like yellow to red flowers.

Description

Bossiaea bombayensis is an erect shrub that typically grows up to high with flattened cladodes wide, and that forms rhizomes. The leaves are reduced to reddish-brown scales, long. The flowers are borne on pedicels long and have four or six brown scales long at the base. The five sepals are long and joined at the base forming a tube, the two upper lobes long and the lower three lobes about long. There are also bracteoles long but that fall off before the flower opens. The standard petal is yellow with a red base and long, the wings yellow with a brownish red base and about wide and the keel is pale pink to red and wide. Flowering occurs in September and October and the fruit is a narrow oblong pod long.

Taxonomy and naming

Bossiaea bombayensis was first formally described in 2009 by Keith Leonard McDougall in the journal Telopea from specimens collected near the Shoalhaven River near Bombay.

Distribution and habitat

Bombay bossiaea grows in shrubland on steep rocky slopes between Warri and Bombay near Braidwood on the Southern Tablelands of New South Wales.

Conservation status

This bossiaeae is listed as critically endangered under the New South Wales Government Biodiversity Conservation Act 2016.