Swainsona tephrotricha is a species of flowering plant in the family Fabaceae and is endemic to eastern South Australia. It is an erect or ascending perennial plant, with imparipinnate leaves with 7 to 19 broadly egg-shaped to narrowly elliptic leaflets, and racemes of 30 or more pink or pinkish-purple flowers.
Swainsona tephrotricha is an erect or ascending subshrubby perennial, with imparipinnate leaves long, with 7 to 19 broadly egg-shaped to narrowly elliptic leaflets, long, the side leaflets long and wide. There is a stipule long at the base of the petiole. The flowers are arranged in racemes with up to 30 or more flowers on a peduncle wide, each flower long on a dark, hairy pedicel long. The sepals are joined at the base, forming a tube long, the sepal lobes usually much shorter than the tube. The petals are pink or pinkish-purple, rarely white, the standard petal long and wide, the wings about long, and the keel about long and deep. Flowering mainly occurs from July to October and the fruit is more or less spherical, long and wide, with the remains of the style about long.[1] [2]
Swainsona tephrotricha was first formally described in 1853 by Ferdinand von Mueller in the journal Linnaea.[3] [4]
This species of pea grows on arid hillsides, often on roadsides, in and around the Flinders Ranges in the east of South Australia.