Swainsona cornuta is a species of flowering plant in the family Fabaceae and is endemic to the west of Western Australia. It is a low-lying, annual or perennial herb with imparipinnate leaves usually with about 7 elliptic leaflets and racemes of 3 to 7 purple flowers.
Swainsona cornuta is a low-lying annual or perennial herb, usually less than high, its stems covered with long, fine hairs uo to long. Its leaves are imparipinnate, less than long, sometimes with stipules up to long at the base of the petiole. There are about 7 elliptic leaflets up to about and wide. The flowers are purple, arranged in racemes up to or more long, with 3 to 7, each flower long on a softly-hairy peduncle long. The sepals are joined at the base, forming a tube about long with the sepal lobes much longer than the sepal tube. The standard petal is long and long, the wings long, and the keel long. Flowering has been observed August.[1]
Swainsona cornuta was first formally described in 1990 by Joy Thompson in the journal Telopea, from a specimen collected near the 850km post on the North West Coastal Highway in 1972.[2] The specific epithet (cornuta) means "horned", referring to the projections on the keel petal.
This species grows in red clay in the Carnarvon and Murchison bioregions in the west of Western Australia.