Swainsona villosa

Swainsona villosa is a prostrate or ascending plant up to about high with many stems, often with their bases below the surface of the soil. The leaves are imparipinnate, mostly long with 7 to 15 egg-shaped leaflets with the narrower end towards the base, the side leaflets long and wide with broad, stipules long, often with a long tapering tip, at the base of the petioles. The flowers are usually purple, sometimes pink or white, arranged in racemes of 2 to 15, on a peduncle about wide, each flower long on a dark, hairy pedicel long. The sepals are joined at the base to form a tube about long, with teeth often twice as long as the tube. The standard petal is long and wide, the wings long and the keel long and deep. Flowering mainly occurs from July to August, and the fruit is an oblong to almost spherical pod long and wide with the remains of the style long. ==Taxonomy and naming==

Swainsona villosa was first formally described in 1924 by John McConnell Black in the Flora of South Australia from specimens collected in the Musgrave Ranges. The specific epithet (villosa) means "with long, soft hairs". ==Distribution==

This Swainson-pea grows on sandy or loamy soils on stone and sandplains in the north of South Australia, in the Central Ranges, Finke, Great Sandy Desert, Great Victoria Desert, MacDonnell Ranges, Stony Plains of southern Northern Territory, and the Central Ranges, Gascoyne and Great Sandy Desert bioregions of Western Australia. ==References==