Leptosema chapmanii
Leptosema chapmanii is a species of flowering plant in the family Fabaceae and is endemic to central Queensland. It is a shrub with stems and flattened branchlets, leaves reduced to triangular scales, deep pink flowers, and beaked, very broadly oval pods.
Description
Leptosema chapmanii is a shrub with many stems that reach to up to high, and flattened branchlets wide. Its leaves are reduced to dark red, triangular scales long. The flowers are densely packed, resupinate, and borne in densely packed rosettes at the base of the plant, each flower on a pedicel long on a rhachis up to long with egg-shaped bracts about long and narrowly egg-shaped bracteoles. The sepals are pink and united for half their length, so that the flower gapes. The petals are deep pink, about the same length as the sepals, the standard petal long, the wings triangular, long and wide and the keel similar to the wings. There are five to eight stamens and the ovary is more or less sessile with 12 to 18 ovules. The pods are very broadly oval, long and wide including a beak long, containing a single kidney-shaped seed.
Taxonomy
Leptosema chapmanii was first formally described in 1999 by Michael Crisp in Australian Systematic Botany from specimens raised from seeds collected from Queensland and cultivated in the Australian National Botanic Gardens. The specific epithet honours Arthur Chapman, who discovered the species near Pentland.
Distribution and habitat
This species of Leptosema grows in heath or shrubland on sandy or gravelly soil in the North Kennedy, Leichhardt and Mitchell districts of Central Queensland.
Conservation status
Leptosema chapmanii is listed as of "least concern" under the Queensland Government Nature Conservation Act 1992.