Daviesia ulicifolia

A rigid, openly-branched shrub potentially growing to a height of up to 2 or 3 metres with a rounded spread to 2 or so meters (often seen smaller) – with prickly-spiny branchlets. It has a divaricate habit – where successive branches are orientated at widely different angles from previous branches – resulting in a tightly interlaced and dense shrub.

It has a very widespread natural, if patchy, geographic distribution: growing commonly along the entire NSW coast and most of the tablelands, from border to border, with patchy occurrences in the western slopes (east of and near to Griffith), extending out to the far south-western plains to the South Australian border (west and north of Mildura), and in the north – as far west as the Pilliga Scrub. It occurs through most of Victoria. There are no records in the far north-western corner of Victoria but it probably occurs here given plants occur around Mildura in NSW. It extends through the coast and tablelands of Queensland and further inland, mostly to about Rockhampton and west of Springsure. However, there are disjunct occurrences between Townsville and Cairns and north-west of Port Douglas. It is found generally through the eastern two-thirds of Tasmania and all of the north coast, as well as the islands of Bass Strait. It is widespread through the southern half of South Australia (from border to border) extending into the southern-central parts of Western Australia, to as far as near Leinster and Queen Victoria Spring Nature Reserve.

It is typically found in dry sclerophyll woodland and forest as well as open shrublands, including mallee shrublands and mulga, and sometimes grasslands. It is a species that does well on disturbed road verges. It is usually found on heavier shale-based soils but can be found on alluvium and sometimes sandy soils (not often on sandstone).

Daviesia spp. have simple leaves modified to phyllodes or rigid scales, arranged alternately. In this species, phyllodes are narrow–elliptic, narrow ovate, to ovate, to about 30 mm long and 6 mm wide, new growth is sometimes light green or glaucous, and old growth very dark green or glaucous; sharply pointed with a prominent midrib on the upper surface; the overall foliage is generally rigid and difficult to handle. Some populations are less prickly than others.

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, flowers are produced in leaf axils as single, paired or sometimes in umbel-like racemes of up to 7 flowers; flowers have hues of orange-yellow and dark red on peduncle up to 3 mm long; occurring from August to October, depending on elevation and latitude.

Flowers are followed by distinctive triangular pods in Daviesia spp. In this species,the fruit is a flattened triangular pod to 8 mm long and to 5 mm wide, brown when ripe.