Common name: Smooth Bush-pea
Pultenaea glabra Benth. APNI*
Description: Erect shrub to 2.2 m; branchlets glabrous.
Leaves alternate, linear to linear oblanceolate, 9–21 mm long, 0.8–2.1 mm wide, apex acuminate and recurved, margins flat, surfaces discolorous, lower surface darker than glaucous upper surface; stipules c. 6 mm long.
Inflorescences terminating leafy shoots, dense, leafy, the leaves often smaller and with slightly enlarged stipules; bracts absent. Flowers c. 7 mm long; pedicels c. 0.5 mm long; bracteoles c. 4 mm long, lacking stipules, narrow-ovate to ovate, acuminate, glabrous, attached near middle of calyx tube. Calyx c. 8 mm long; lobes acuminate. Ovary glabrous.
Pod c. 5 mm long, turgid.
Flowering: September–November
Distribution and occurrence: Higher Blue Mtns, from the Kings Tableland in the south to the vicinity of Mount Tomah in the north. Riparian vegetation alongside streams, streambanks and alluvial terraces, in gully heads and the margins of hanging swamps.
NSW subdivisions: CT, CC
Threatened species: NSW BCA: Vulnerable; Commonwealth EPBC: Vulnerable
Previous concepts included P. euchila, P. mutabilis, P. aculeata and P. weindorferi, but none of these species have furcate or whorled branching due to the presence of terminal inflorescences as in P. glabra. Hybrids with P. flexilis are known from the Hazelwood area.
Text by M.A.M.Renner & R.L.Barrett Taxon concept: Renner et al., Aust. Syst. Bot. 35: 141 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1071/SB21030
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