Daviesia mimosoides

A multi–stemmed shrub, typically to 2 metres high by 1 metre wide (in rare cases it can reach 5 metres).

It has a widespread, if patchy, natural geographic distribution in NSW: growing on the south coast and southern tablelands as far south as the border, north through the ACT and larger Sydney-area commonly (as far west as around Katoomba). Records are disjunct and much scarcer in areas such as Mulwala (and slightly further west) and Temora-Ardlethan which seems to be the western extent in the southern parts. Patchy records can then be found on the central and north-western slopes and north coast subdivisions, from Newcastle northward, as far west as Goobang National Park near Dubbo and Coolah Tops; petering out at Gloucester on the North Coast; with further records from Tingha to the Queensland border on the north western slopes. In Queensland, records occur in the Wallangarra-Stanthorpe-Texas area with more records around the Gold Coast, Boonah, Crows Nest and Yandina. There is a final disjunct patch west of Bundaberg. It is also patchy in Victoria, scattered through the eastern half of the State, reaching close to the eastern outskirts of Melbourne, and then found with some disjunction around Ballarat, Ararat and Stawell. Additional and well-disjunct records have been found near Whyalla in South Australia in Alligator Gorge.

It is typically found in dry sclerophyll woodland and forest often on acidic soils including sandstone and sandy as well as other rocky substrates. In some habitats, it can be a dominant midstorey shrub.

Daviesia spp. have simple leaves modified to phyllodes or rigid scales and arranged alternately.

In this species, phyllodes are mostly narrowly–elliptic, sometimes linear, varying in width, to 200 mm long and 4 to 30 mm wide; mid to dark green in colour, sometimes somewhat glaucous (from a distance – plants can sometimes resemble species such as Acacia implexa).

Daviesia spp. have pea-flowers (papilionate) which are 5-merous but with the typical pea–setup where there is one large rear petal called the “standard”, two fused bottom petals called the “keel” and two lateral petals called “wings”. In this species, up to 10 flowers are produced in condensed racemes in leaf axils (appearing like heads), to about 3 cm across, on a peduncle to 5 mm long; more than one raceme can be produced per axil; flowers are an attractive orange-yellow with dark brownish-red or maroon markings and a yellow centre; occurring mainlyin September and October.

Flowers are followed by distinctive triangular pods in Daviesia spp. In this species, the pod is to to 10 mm long and to 7 mm wide, brown in colour when ripe.