Pandorea pandorana

Pandorea pandorana is a vigorous woody climber, with twining stems growing to 10 metres or more long; with fawn coloured bark.

It has a large natural range across NSW, growing commonly ialong the entirety of the coast, right out to the far western plains. It grows ove rmuch of the eastern half of Queensland, right up to Cape York, as well as the eastern half of Victoria. It is found disjunctly in the places such as near the centre of Australia (WA, SA and NT border-area); the east coast of Western Australia around Perth and the northern parts of WA. It also occurs on Lord Howe Island as well as Flinders Island.  

It grows in a variety of habitats including wet and dry sclerophyll woodland and forest, as well as heathlands and shrublands (including semi-arid and arid), and commonly in rainforest, on a variety of soils. It favours rocky sites in many locations. 

Pandorea spp. have compound and opposite leaves, with leaves having one level of leaflet division and an odd number of leaflets with one terminal leaflet (a compound leaf called imparipinnate). In this species, leaves are to 16 cm long with up to 9 leaflets; each leaflet to 8 cm long and 3 cm wide, lanceolate to ovate and with a mucro with entire margins, and dark to mid-green in colour. The juvenile leaves are very distinctive; to 8 cm long with up to 17 small and toothed leaflets, each about 1 x 1 cm or so. 

Pandorea have tubular flowers produced in thryses or racemes, at the terminals or upper leaf axils. In this species, flowers are about two centimetres long, usually creamy-white with either brown or purple markings in the throat. Flowering is both profuse and conspicuous in spring and is particularly eye-catching because the blooms are held in large terminal clusters.

Pandorea have fruits looking very much like a pods but they are capsules. In this species – they are oblong to ovoid, to 6 cm long and 2 cm wide with many pretty winged seeds to 1.5 cm in diameter.