Swainsona elegans
Swainsona elegans is a species of flowering plant in the family Fabaceae and is endemic to Western Australia. It is a prostrate or ascending annual with imparipinnate leaves, usually with 7 to 15 egg-shaped or elliptic leaflets, and racemes of up to 15 blue or reddish-purple flowers.
Description
Swainsona elegans is a prostrate or ascending annual plant that typically grows to a height of up to with stems about in diameter. Its leaves are imparipinnate, up to about long with 7 to 15 egg-shaped or elliptic leaflets with the narrower end towards the base, the lower leaflets long and wide. There are variably-shaped stipules more than long at the base of the petiole. The flowers are arranged in racemes mostly of up to 15 on a peduncle long, each flower long. The sepals are joined at the base, forming a tube about long, the sepal lobes about the same length as the tube. The petals are pale blue, dark blue or reddish-purple, the standard petal long and wide, the wings long, and the keel about long and wide. Flowering occurs from July to October, and the fruit is a pod long and wide with the remains of the style about long.
Taxonomy and naming
Swainsona elegans was first formally described in 1948 by Alma Theodora Lee in Contributions from the New South Wales National Herbarium, from specimens collected east of Carnarvon in 1937. The specific epithet means "fine" or "elegant".
This species of pea grows in damp, often salty and on stony, hilly places in the Avon Wheatbelt, Carnarvon, Gascoyne, Murchison and Yalgoo bioregions of Western Australia.