Bossiaea concolor


Bossiaea concolor is a species of flowering plant in the family Fabaceae and is endemic to eastern Australia. It is an erect shrub with elliptic to oblong or egg-shaped leaves with the lower end towards the base, and yellow and red flowers.

Description

Bossiaea concolor is an erect shrub that typically grows to a height of up to and has more or less glabrous branchlets. The leaves are elliptic to oblong or egg-shaped leaves with the lower end towards the base, long and wide on a petiole long with narrow triangular stipules long at the base. The leaves are usually concave or folded lengthwise. The flowers are borne along side-branchlets on pedicels long with a bract long. The sepals are long and joined at the base with egg-shaped to elliptic bracteoles long at the base. The five sepal lobes are long, the upper two lobes much broader than the lower ones. The standard petal is yellow with a red base and up to long, the wings yellow, shorter than the keel, and the keel has a red base. Flowering occurs in late winter and spring and the fruit is an oblong to elliptic pod long.

Taxonomy

This species was first formally described in 1908 by Joseph Maiden and Ernst Betche who gave it the name Bossiaea rhombifolia subsp. concolor in the Proceedings of the Linnean Society of [New South Wales]. In 2012 Ian R. Thompson raised the variety to species status as Bossiaea concolor in the journal Muelleria. The specific epithet means "uniformly coloured".

Distribution and habitat

Bossiaea concolor grows in woodland and forest, mostly to the west of the Great Dividing Range, from near Shoalwater Bay in Queensland to near Mudgee in New South Wales.