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Swainsona colutoides
Bladder senna is an erect, shrub-like annual pea from arid Australia, growing about 1 to 1.3 m tall with purple pea flowers. It is grown mainly as a drought-tolerant native or experimental forage plant rather than as a garden favourite.
Swainsona colutoides, commonly known as bladder senna or bladder vetch, is a species of flowering plant in the family Fabaceae and is endemic to arid areas of Australia. It is an erect annual, shrub-like herb, with imparipinnate leaves usually with up to 13 to 17 egg-shaped leaflets with the narrower end towards the base, and racemes of 10 to 20 purple flowers.
This species of pea grows in sandy and clayey soils in Western Australia, the Northern Territory, South Australia and New South Wales. It occurs in the Avon Wheatbelt, Coolgardie, Great Victoria Desert, Mallee and Murchison of Western Australia, the Nullarbor Plain, Great Victoria Desert, Eyre Peninsula and Murray Darling Depression bioregions of South Australia, the MacDonnell Ranges in the Northern Territory and the far south-west of New South Wales.
An erect annual or biennial, its high production of larger seeds, delayed dehiscence, and low concentrations of the toxin swainsonine gives it potential for development as a forage crop.
Swainsona acuticarinata · Swainsona adenophylla · Swainsona affinis · Swainsona beasleyana · Southern Swainson Pea · Slender Swainson Pea · Swainsona bracteata · Swainsona burkei · Woolly Darling Pea · Swainsona cadellii · Swainsona calcicola · Swainsona campestris
Text excerpted from the Wikipedia article Swainsona colutoides by its contributors, under CC BY-SA 4.0; the excerpts and the care summary drawn from them are shared under the same licence.
The care summary was written by AI (Claude, Anthropic) from the sources on this page, with general growing knowledge where they are silent. Check before relying on it.
Life form, climate and native range: World Checklist of Vascular Plants, Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew (CC BY 3.0), reformatted; see Plants of the World Online.
