Daviesia arenaria, commonly known as sandhill bitter-pea,[1] is a species of flowering plant in the family Fabaceae and is endemic to south-eastern continental Australia. It is usually a hummock-forming shrub with many short, spiny branchlets and heart-shaped to elliptic phyllodes with a sharp point on the end, and orange-pink, maroon and yellow flowers.
Daviesia arenaria is usually a hummock-forming shrub that typically grows up to high and wide and has many short, spiny branchlets. Its leaves are reduced to heart-shaped to elliptic phyllodes that are v-shaped in cross-section, wide and wide with a sharply-pointed tip. The flowers are orange-pink with maroon and yellow markings, arranged singly or in pairs in leaf axils, each flower on a pedicel long with several egg-shaped bracts about long at the base. The five sepals are long with triangular lobes about long. The petals are orange-pink on the front, maroon on the back with a greenish-yellow line on both sides, the standard petal, wings and keel all long. Flowering mainly occurs from August to November and the fruit is a flattened triangular pod long.[2] [3] [4] [5]
Daviesia arenaria was first formally described in 1980 by Michael Crisp in Journal of the Adelaide Botanic Gardens from specimens he collected west of Euston in 1979.[6] The specific epithet (arenaria) means "growing in sand".[7]
This species of pea mainly grows in mallee and is found in south-western New South Wales, western Victoria and south-eastern South Australia.