Swainsona paradoxa is a species of flowering plant in the family Fabaceae and is endemic to inland Western Australia. It is a prostrate or ascending perennial or annual herb with imparipinnate leaves with up to 9 mostly broadly egg-shaped leaflets and racemes of 2 to 20 purple, pink or white flowers.
Swainsona paradoxa is a prostrate or ascending perennial or annual plant, that rarely grows to a height of and has many stems. The leaves are imparipinnate, mostly long with up to 9 broadly egg-shaped leaflets with the narrower end towards the base, the side leaflets up to long and wide with stipules mostly long at the base of the petioles. The flowers are purple, pink or white, arranged in racemes of 2 to 20, long, on a peduncle wide. The sepals are joined at the base to form a tube about long, with lobes shorter than the tube. The standard petal is long and up to about wide, the wings long and the keel about long and deep.[1] Flowering occurs in April or May, or from July to September, and the fruit is a pod long on a stalk about long, with the remains of the strongly curved style long.
Swainsona paradoxa was first formally described in 1904 by William Vincent Fitzgerald and the description was published in the Journal of the West Australian Natural History Society from specimens he found near the margins of a salt lake near Nannine.[2] [3] The specific epithet (paradoxa) means "unexpected" or "strange", referring to the fruit.[4]
This species of pea grows on the edges of salt lakes or salt flats in the Coolgardie, Gascoyne and Murchison bioregions of inland Western Australia.