Senna clavigera
Senna clavigera, commonly known as pepper leaf senna, is a species of flowering plant in the family Fabaceae and is endemic to eastern Australia. It is a perennial herb with pinnate leaves with four to seven pairs of lance-shaped to elliptic leaflets, and groups of four to twenty yellow flowers in upper leaf axils.
Description
Senna clavigera is a perennial herb that typically grows to a height of up to, and is more or less glabrous. Its leaves are pinnate, long with four to seven pairs of lance-shaped to narrowly elliptic or elliptic leaflets, long and wide. There is a single sessile glands near the base of the petiole. The flowers are yellow and arranged in groups of four to twenty in upper leaf axils on a peduncle long, each flower on a pedicel long. The petals are up to long and there are six fertile stamens, the anthers long as well as three staminodes. Flowering occurs in most months with a peak in summer, and the fruit is a dark brown, cylindrical pod long and about wide.
Taxonomy
This species was first formally described in 1926 by Karel Domin who gave it the name Cassia sophera var. clavigera in Bibliotheca Botanica. In 1988, Barbara Rae Randell raised the variety to species status as Senna clavigera in the Journal of the Adelaide Botanic Garden. The specific epithet means "club-bearer".
Distribution and habitat
Senna clavigera grows in wet forest and on the edges of rainforest in eastern Queensland and in New South Wales as far south as the Shoalhaven River. It is possibly weedy in some areas.