Leptosema aculeatum


Leptosema aculeatum is a species of flowering plant in the family Fabaceae and is endemic to inland areas of Western Australia. It is a shrub with a tuft of stems up to tall, many rigid, strongly flattened and spiny branchlets, leaves reduced to scales, red flowers, and beaked pods densely covered with silky hairs.

Description

Leptosema aculeatum is a shrub with a tuft of stems up to tall, its branchlets strongly compressed or flattened and spiny. Its leaves are reduced to awl-shaped scales, long. The flowers are red, resupinate, and borne in rose-shaped, loosely arranged clusters spreading along the soil surface on a rhachis up to long with egg-shaped bracts about long. The sepals are long and form a tube about long. The standard petal is enclosed in the sepals, the wings are linear, long and wide with the
keel protruding and long. The ovary is more or less sessile, densely covered with silky hairs with about 60 ovules. The pods are sessile, elliptic, beaked, long and wide and densely covered with silky hairs.

Taxonomy

Leptosema aculeatum was first formally described in 1987 by Michael Crisp in the Journal of the Adelaide Botanic Gardens from specimens collected west of Plumridge Lakes in 1979. The specific epithet means 'prickly', referring to the spiny branchlets.

Distribution and habitat

This species of Leptosema grows in hummock grassland dominated by Triodia from near Sandstone and south to near Mount Jackson and east to Queen Victoria Spring in the Coolgardie, Great Victoria Desert and Murchison bioregions of inland Western Australia.

Conservation status

Jacksonia condensata is listed as "not threatened" by the Government of Western Australia Department of Biodiversity, Conservation and Attractions.