Pultenaea tenella, commonly known as delicate bush-pea,[1] is a species of flowering plant in the family Fabaceae and is endemic to the high country near the border between New South Wales and Victoria in south-eastern continental Australia. It is a small, prostrate, mat-forming shrub with elliptic to linear leaves and yellow to orange and red, pea-like flowers.
Pultenaea tenella is a trailing, prostrate, mat-forming shrub that typically grows to a height of and has trailing branchlets up to long that form adventitious roots at the nodes. The leaves are arranged in whorls of three, elliptic to linear, mostly long and wide with stipules long at the base. The upper surface of the leaves is glabrous but the lower surface is hairy. The flowers are borne singly in leaf axils on a pedicel long with linear bracteoles long attached. The sepals are long, the standard yellow to orange with a red base and long, the wings yellow to orange and long and the keel yellow and long. Flowering occurs from December to January and the fruit is a flattened pod long.[2]
Pultenaea tenella was first formally described in 1864 by George Bentham in Flora Australiensis from specimens collected by Ferdinand von Mueller at "an elevation of ".[3] The specific epithet (tenella) means "delicate".[4]
This pultenaea grows in swamps and moist herbfields in the ranges of north-eastern Victoria, and there is a single record from Mount Kosciuszko in New South Wales.