Daviesia sarissa
Daviesia sarissa is a species of flowering plant in the family Fabaceae and is endemic to inland areas of south-western Western Australia. It is a spreading or sprawling, glaucous shrub with scattered, long, rigid, cylindrical, sharply-pointed phyllodes, and orange-yellow and red flowers.
Description
Daviesia sarissa is a spreading or sprawling, glabrous, glaucous shrub that typically grows up to high and wide. Its phyllodes are scattered, rigid, cylindrical, long, wide and fiercely pointed. The flowers are arranged in a group of three to six in leaf axils on a peduncle about long, the rachis long, each flower on a pedicel long. The sepals are long and joined at the base, the two upper lobes joined for most of their length, the lower three with lobes about long. The standard petal is broadly elliptic, long, wide, and orange-yellow with a dark red base. The wings are long and red, the keel long and red. Flowering occurs from July to September and the fruit is a triangular pod long.Taxonomy
Daviesia sarissa was first formally described in 1995 by Michael Crisp in Australian Systematic Botany from specimens he collected near Lake Chidnup, north-west of Ravensthorpe in 1975. The specific epithet is a word meaning a long Macedonian lance, referring to the leaves.In the same paper, Crisp described two subspecies of D. sarissa and the names are accepted by the Australian Plant Census:Daviesia sarissa subsp. redacta Crisp;Daviesia sarissa Crisp subsp. sarissa Crisp differs from subsp. redacta in having bracts that do not overlap or hide the inflorescence, but are long, the flowers usually smaller.