Pultenaea trichophylla, commonly known as tufted bush-pea,[1] is a species of flowering plant in the family Fabaceae and is endemic to South Australia. It is a slender, prostrate to erect shrub with hairy branchlets, lance-shaped leaves, and yellow to orange and red, pea-like flowers.
Pultenaea trichophylla is a slender, prostrate to erect shrub that typically grows to a height of up to and has reddish stems that are initially softly-hairy. The leaves appear to be arranged in whorls near the ends of branchlets, and are lance-shaped, long, wide on a petiole long with lance-shaped stipules long at the base. The flowers are arranged near the ends of branchlets and are about long and are more or less sessile with two or three egg-shaped bracts at the base. The sepals are long with linear bracteoles about long at the base of the sepal tube. The standard petal is yellow-orange with a red base and long, the wings yellow to orange and long, and the keel red and long. Flowering mainly occurs from September to December and the fruit is an egg-shaped pod about long.[2]
Pultenaea trichophylla was first formally described in 1924 by John McConnell Black in the Flora of South Australia from an unpublished description by Herbert Bennett Williamson, the type specimens collected near Port Lincoln.[3] In 1925, H.B. Williamson published a description of Pultenaea trichophylla from the same collection, in Proceedings of the Royal Society of Victoria, but the Williamson's name is illegitimate because it had already been published by Black.[4] [5] The specific epithet (trichophylla) means "hair-like-leaved".[6]
This species of pultenaea grows in open woodland or mallee on the southern Eyre Peninsula.