Kennedia procurrens


Kennedia procurrens, commonly known as the purple running pea, is a species of flowering plant in the family Fabaceae and is endemic to eastern Australia. It is a prostrate or climbing herb with trifoliate leaves and pale red to mauve or violet flowers.

Description

Kennedia procurrens is a prostrate or climbing herb with softly-hairy stems long. The leaves are trifoliate with broadly egg-shaped or broadly elliptic leaves long and wide with egg-shaped stipules long at the base. The flower are pale red to mauve or violet, long and arranged in groups of two to ten on a flowering stem long, the flowers on peduncles long. Flowering occurs from late winter to summer and the fruit is a glabrous, cylindrical or flattened pod long.

Taxonomy

Kennedia procurrens was first formally described in 1848 in Thomas Mitchell's Journal of an Expedition into the Interior of Tropical Australia. The specific epithet means "extending", "jutting out" or "projecting".

Distribution and habitat

Purple running pea grows in woodland in sandy soil in southern Queensland and northern New South Wales as far south as Coonabarabran.