Senna cladophylla
Senna cladophylla is a species of flowering plant in the family Fabaceae and native to Western Australia and the Northern Territory. It is a perennial herb or undershrub with pinnate leaves with two or three pairs of broadly elliptic leaflets, and yellow flowers arranged in pairs, with ten fertile stamens in each flower.
Description
Senna cladophylla is a spreading, perennial herb or subshrub that typically grows to a height of up to, its stems and foliage softly-hairy. The leaves are pinnate, long on a petiole long with two or three pairs of broadly elliptic leaflets long and wide. There are persistent heart-shaped or ear-shaped stipules at the base of the petioles. The flowers are yellow and arranged in pairs in leaf axils on a peduncle long, each flower on a pedicel long. The petals are long and there are ten fertile stamens, the anthers long and of different lengths. Flowering occurs from February to July, and the fruit is a flattened, curved pod long.
Taxonomy
This species was first formally described in 1918 by William Vincent Fitzgerald who gave it the name Cassia cladophylla in the Journal and Proceedings of the Royal Society of Western Australia. In 1998, Barbara Rae Randell and Bryan Alwyn Barlow transferred the species to Senna as Senna cladophylla in the Flora of Australia. The specific epithet refers to the individual leaves resembling a short, leafy branch.
Distribution and habitat
Senna cladophylla grows in moist, rocky soil in the Kimberley region of northern Western Australia and in Arnhem Land in the Northern Territory.