Chorizema spathulatum explained

Chorizema spathulatum is a species of flowering plant in the family Fabaceae and is endemic to the southwest of Western Australia. It is an erect or low-lying shrub with linear to wedge-shaped or almost oblong leaves, and yellow pea flowers.

Description

Chorizema spathulatum is an erect or low-lying shrub with glabrous hairy stems. Its leaves are linear to wedge-shaped or almost oblong, long wide and hairy. The flowers are yellow, arranged in racemes on the ends of the branches, each flower on a pedicel long and hairy with bracteoles at the base but that fall of as the flowers open. The sepals are silky-hairy, about long, the upper two lobes broader. The flowers are yellow, long, the standard petal long, the wings long, and the keel long. Flowering occurs from October to December and the fruit is a pod long and wide.[1]

Taxonomy and naming

This species was first formally described in 1848 by Carl Meissner who gave it the name Callistachys spathulata in Lehmann's Plantae Preissianae.[2] [3] In 1992, Joan M. Taylor and Michael Crisp transferred the species to Chorizema as C. spathulatum in Australian Systematic Botany. The specific epithet (spathulatum) means "spoon-shaped", referring to the leaves.[4]

Distribution and habitat

Chorizema spathulatum usually grows in sandy soil in the Jarrah Forest and Swan Coastal Plain bioregions of south-western Western Australia.

Notes and References

  1. Book: Bentham . George . Flora Australiensis . 2 . 1864 . Lovell Reeve & Co. . London . 18 . 5 November 2023.
  2. Web site: Callistachys spathulata . Australian Plant Name Index . 1 November 2022.
  3. Book: Meissner . Carl . Preiss . Johann J.C. . Plantae preissianae sive enumeratio plantarum quas in australasia occidentali et meridionali-occidentali annis 1838-1841 collegit Ludovicus Preiss . 2 . 1848 . Sumptibus Meissneri . Hamburg . 208 .
  4. Book: Sharr . Francis Aubi . George . Alex . Western Australian Plant Names and Their Meanings . 2019 . Four Gables Press . Kardinya, WA . 9780958034180 . 311 . 3rd.