Leptosema daviesioides
Leptosema daviesioides is a species of flowering plant in the family Fabaceae and is endemic to the south-west of Western Australia. It is a shrub with many rigid, spiny branches, leaves reduced to triangular scales, deep pink flowers, and beaked, very broadly oval pods.
Description
Leptosema daviesioides is a prostrate or erect, widely branched shrub that typically grows to a height of and has many intricate, rigid, spiny branches. Its adult leaves are reduced to scales long and fused to the stem. The flowers are densely packed, resupinate, and borne in densely packed rosettes at the base of the plant, each flower long on a pedicel long on a rhachis long with egg-shaped bracteoles about long. The sepals are pink and curved back, so that the flower gapes. The petals are red or pink, the standard petal enclosed in the sepals, long, the wings protruding, linear, about long and wide and the keel protruding, about long. The ovary is more or less sessile with 30 to 35 ovules. The pods are broadly oval, long and wide including the beak.
Taxonomy
This species was first formally described in 1853 by Nikolai Turczaninow who gave it the name Kaleniczenkia daviesioides in the Bulletin de la Société impériale des naturalistes de Moscou from specimens collected by James Drummond. In 1987, Michael Crisp transferred the species to Leptosema as L. davesioides in the Journal of the Adelaide Botanic Gardens. The specific epithet means 'Daviesia-like'.
Distribution and habitat
Leptosema daviesioides grows in a variety of soil types and habitats, but usually sand, often in heath with Allocasuarina campestris and Melaleuca, between the Murchison River, Lake Grace and west to Balladonia and Cundeelee.
Conservation status
Leptosema daviesioides is listed as "not threatened" by the Government of Western Australia Department of Biodiversity, Conservation and Attractions.