Hovea lorata
Hovea lorata, is a species of flowering plant in the family Fabaceae and is endemic to eastern Australia. It is a shrub with lorate leaves, and mauve and greenish-yellow, pea-like flowers.
Description
Hovea lorata is a shrub that typically grows to a height of up to, with many parts covered with brownish hairs. The leaves are strap-shaped, long and wide with stipules long at the base. The flowers are usually arranged in groups of two or three on a peduncle up to long, each flower on a pedicel long. The flowers have egg-shaped bracts long and slightly larger bracteoles at the base. The sepals are joined at the base, forming a tube long, the upper lip wide and the lower lip wide. The petals are mauve, the standard petal long, wide and mauve with a greenish-yellow base surrounded by a deep mauve border, the wings long and the keel long. Flowering occurs from July to October and the fruit is a more or less round pod long and wide.
Taxonomy and naming
Hovea lorata was first formally described in 2001 by Ian R. Thompson in Australian Systematic Botany from specimens collected by James Henderson Ross near Goombungee in 1986.
Distribution and habitat
This species of pea grows in forest and woodland on sandy or rocky soils and occurs from south-eastern Queensland to the Mount Royal Range in New South Wales, with an outlier near Longreach in central Queensland.