Daviesia latifolia


Daviesia latifolia, commonly known as hop bitter-pea, is a species of flowering plant in the family Fabaceae and is endemic to south-eastern Australia. It is a slender, erect, spreading shrub with elliptic, egg-shaped or lance-shaped phyllodes and orange-yellow and maroon flowers in long racemes.

Description

Daviesia latifolia is a slender, erect shrub that typically grows to high and wide and has arching, glabrous branches. Adult phyllodes are elliptic to egg-shaped or lance-shaped, long and wide on a petiole-like base long. The phyllodes are wavy with scalloped edges and have prominent veins. Juvenile phyllodes are slightly broader.
The flowers are borne in leaf axils along up to three racemes, the peduncle long, the rachis long, each flower on a pedicel long. The sepals are long and joined at the base, the upper two joined for most of their length and the lower three triangular and long. The standard petal is broadly egg-shaped, long and orange-yellow and maroon with a yellow centre, the wings long and yellow and maroon, and the keel long and maroon. Flowering occurs from September to December and the fruit is triangular pod long.

Taxonomy

Daviesia latifolia was first formally described in 1811 by Robert Brown in Aiton's Hortus Kewensis. The specific epithet means "broad-leaved".

Distribution and habitat

Hop bitter-pea grows in forest, often as an understorey plant and occurs at altitudes up to, from the Granite Belt of south-eastern Queensland, through the tablelands, western slopes and south coast of New South Wales, to most of Victoria apart, from the north west of the state. It is also common in dry woodlands in Tasmania.

Ecology

This daviesia provides nectar for a range of insects and native birds.

Uses

Use in horticulture

The species is useful as an ornamental, as a windbreak and in nitrogen-fixing. It prefers well-drained soil in full sun and is frost tolerant.

Other uses

The stems and phyllodes can be used with alum to produce a fawn dye used as a mordant. The phyllodes also have reputed medicinal properties, and were also substituted as hops to flavour beer. Early European settlers used the leaves as a drug to expel intestinal worms, including hydatid cysts, and also as tonic.