Swainsona tanamiensis is a species of flowering plant in the family Fabaceae and is endemic to north-western Australia. It is a prostrate or erect perennial plant with imparipinnate leaves with 5 to 13 broadly egg-shaped to elliptic, or almost round leaflets, and racemes of up to 8 purple flowers.
Swainsona tanamiensis is a prostrate or erect perennial plant that typically grows to a height of up to about, and has many hairy stems. Its leaves are imparipinnate, about long with 5 to 13 broadly egg-shaped to elliptic or almost round leaflets, the side leaflets mostly long and wide. There is a stipule mostly about long at the base of the petiole. The flowers are arranged in racemes long with up to 8 flowers on a peduncle wide, each flower about long on a pedicel about long. The sepals are joined at the base, forming a tube long, the sepal lobes about as long or somewhat shorter than the tube. The petals are purple, the standard petal long and wide, the wings long, and the keel about long and deep. Flowering occurs from April to July, and the fruit is mostly long and wide.[1]
Swainsona tanamiensis was first formally described in 1993 by Joy Thompson in the journal Telopea from specimens collected by William Robert Barker near Lake Ruth in the Tanami Desert in 1975.[2] The specific epithet (tanamiensis) refers the Tanami Desert.
This species of pea grows in clay or sandy soil on floodplains, and the edges of salt lakes in the Dampierland, Gascoyne, Great Sandy Desert, Pilbara and Tanami bioregions of Western Australia and the Northern Territory.[3]