Hovea pungens, commonly known as devil's pins, is a species of flowering plant in the family Fabaceae and is endemic to Western Australia. It is a small, upright shrub with dark green leaves and purple flowers.
Hovea pungens is an upright shrub that typically grows to a height of 0.2to, and single stemmed or multi-branched. The branchlets thickly covered with a combination of straight, creased, flattened to spreading or upright hairs. The dark green leaves are linear, elliptic-oblong to egg or lance-shaped, long and up to wide, upper surface smooth, lower surface hairy, margins rolled under, petiole long, and the leaves ending in a sharp point. The inflorescence are in leaf axils either sessile or on a peduncle up to long. The purple pea-shaped flowers are borne singly or in a small grouping of two or three on a pedicel long that are thickly covered in hairs. The standard petal is long and wide with a white centre flare,wings are long and wide, and the keel long and wide. Flowering occurs from May to November and the fruit is a smooth, oval or ellipsoid pod, long and wide. The Noongar name for the plant is buyenak.[1] [2]
Hovea pungens was first formally described in 1837 by George Bentham and the description was published in Enumeratio plantarum quas in Novae Hollandiae ora austro-occidentali ad fluvium Cygnorum et in sinu Regis Georgii collegit Carolus Liber Baro de Hügel.[3] [4] The specific epithet (pungens) means "ending in a sharp, hard point" referring to the leaf.[5]
Devil's pins grows in shallow soils among granite, sandy and clay loams, outcrops, coastal limestone on flats, woodland, low heath and undulating sandplains. The species has a distribution on the south west coast in the Wheatbelt, Peel, South West, Great Southern and Goldfields-Esperance regions of Western Australia.[2]