Hovea longifolia

A medium shrub to 3 metres tall, usually with a narrow spread. The stems have dense brown to grey, sometimes partly black, hairs.

It has a wide, mostly coastal range in NSW, growing in disjunct patches along shaded slopes above creeks and creekbanks, chiefly north from Narooma, with some records on the NSW-Vic border and extending east to Melbourne. It grows commonly around Sydney to Newcastle and then disjunctly to west of Port Macquarie and Coffs Harbour and south-east of Grafton as well as the NSW-Qld border. It has a scattered occurrence through the coastal hinterland of Queensland to as far as Cape York.

It typically grows in riparian areas (creeklines and banks) in moist-dry and wet sclerophyll forest, usually on sandy soils or enriched sandy loams.

Hovea is a member of the “pea” family. This generally means that leaves are alternate with stipules at the base of the petioles. Hovea have simple and alternate leaves, with stipules present or absent, sometimes caducous which means forming and then falling off quickly. In this species, leaves are to 9 cm long and to just short of 1 cm wide, linear, flat to slightly arched with a sunken midrib; with a short mucro and with the margins turned downwards as well as inwards (recurved / revolute); the upper surface is hairless and glossy and the lower surface has a dense golden-brown indumentum.

Flowers are, of course, pea-shaped (a term sometimes used is papilionate), with 5 petals in a fixed arrangement; the main back petal is called the “standard”, two lateral petals called “wings” and two fused petals at the bottom called the “keel” (in which the anthers and one carpel tend to be hidden). In this species, flowers are in leaf axils, either solitary or in groups of 3, blue-mauve in colour, with the standard petal about 1 cm across and with a yellow to cream spot, occurring from winter to spring.

The fruit of all peas is a pod, In this species, they are approximately 15 mm long with seeds about 3 mm long.