Leptosema tomentosum
Leptosema tomentosum is a species of flowering plant in the family Fabaceae and is endemic to the south-west of Western Australia. It is a densely tufted, leafless shrub with arching stems, broadly winged branches and branchlets, leaves reduced to egg-shaped scales, yellowish-green flowers, and broadly egg-shaped, beaked pods.
Description
Leptosema tomentosum is a densely tufted, leafless shrub or subshrub that typically grows up to high and wide and has arching stems, its branches and branchlets winged and wide. Its adult leaves are reduced to egg-shaped scales long. The flowers are resupinate, and borne in racemes of up to twelve in rosettes at the base of the plant, each flower long on a pedicel long on a rhachis up to long. The sepals are long. The petals are yellowish-green, the standard petal long and enclosed in the sepal tube, the wings linear, long and wide and the keel protruding, linear to egg-shaped, long and wide. The ovary has about 50 ovules. Flowering occurs from August to October, and the pods are hairy, very broadly egg-shaped, long and wide, including a beak long.
Taxonomy
This species was first formally described in 1864 by George Bentham who gave it the name Brachysema tomentosum in his Flora Australiensis from specimens collected between the Moore and Murchison Rivers by James Drummond. In 1987, Michael Crisp transferred the species to Leptosema as L. tomentosum in Australian Systematic Botany. The specific epithet means 'tomentose'.
Distribution and habitat
Leptosema tomentosum grows on sand in heath between the Kalbarri National Park and Wongan Hills in the Avon Wheatbelt, Geraldton Sandplains and Yalgoo bioregions of south-western Western Australia.
Conservation status
Leptosema tomentosum is listed as "not threatened" by the Government of Western Australia Department of Biodiversity, Conservation and Attractions.