''Hovea pungens'', commonly known as devil's pins,
is a species of flowering plant in the family
and is
endemic
Endemism is the state of a species being found in a single defined geographic location, such as an island, state, nation, country or other defined zone; organisms that are indigenous to a place are not endemic to it if they are also found elsew ...
to Western Australia. It is a small, upright shrub with dark green leaves and purple flowers.
Description
''Hovea pungens'' is an upright shrub that typically grows to a height of , and single stemmed or multi-branched. The branchlets thickly covered with a combination of straight, creased, flattened to spreading or upright hairs. The dark green leaves are linear, elliptic-oblong to egg or lance-shaped, long and up to wide, upper surface smooth, lower surface hairy, margins rolled under,
petiole long, and the leaves ending in a sharp point. The
inflorescence
An inflorescence is a group or cluster of flowers arranged on a stem that is composed of a main branch or a complicated arrangement of branches. Morphologically, it is the modified part of the shoot of seed plants where flowers are formed o ...
are in leaf axils either
sessile
Sessility, or sessile, may refer to:
* Sessility (motility), organisms which are not able to move about
* Sessility (botany), flowers or leaves that grow directly from the stem or peduncle of a plant
* Sessility (medicine), tumors and polyps that ...
or on a
peduncle up to long. The purple pea-shaped flowers are borne singly or in a small grouping of two or three on a
pedicel
Pedicle or pedicel may refer to:
Human anatomy
*Pedicle of vertebral arch, the segment between the transverse process and the vertebral body, and is often used as a radiographic marker and entry point in vertebroplasty and kyphoplasty procedures
...
long that are thickly covered in hairs. The
standard petal is long and wide with a white centre flare,
wings
A wing is a type of fin that produces lift while moving through air or some other fluid. Accordingly, wings have streamlined cross-sections that are subject to aerodynamic forces and act as airfoils. A wing's aerodynamic efficiency is expresse ...
are long and wide, and the
keel
The keel is the bottom-most longitudinal structural element on a vessel. On some sailboats, it may have a hydrodynamic and counterbalancing purpose, as well. As the laying down of the keel is the initial step in the construction of a ship, in Br ...
long and wide. Flowering occurs from May to November and the fruit is a smooth, oval or ellipsoid
pod
Pod or POD may refer to:
Biology
* Pod (fruit), a type of fruit of a flowering plant
* Husk or pod of a legume
* Pod of whales or other marine mammals
* "-pod", a suffix meaning "foot" used in taxonomy
Electronics and computing
* Proper ort ...
, long and wide. The
Noongar
The Noongar (, also spelt Noongah, Nyungar , Nyoongar, Nyoongah, Nyungah, Nyugah, and Yunga ) are Aboriginal Australian peoples who live in the south-west corner of Western Australia, from Geraldton on the west coast to Esperance on the so ...
name for the plant is buyenak.
Taxonomy and naming
''Hovea pungens'' was first formally described in 1837 by George Bentham
George Bentham (22 September 1800 – 10 September 1884) was an English botanist, described by the weed botanist Duane Isely as "the premier systematic botanist of the nineteenth century". Born into a distinguished family, he initially studi ...
and the description was published in ''''.specific epithet
In taxonomy, binomial nomenclature ("two-term naming system"), also called nomenclature ("two-name naming system") or binary nomenclature, is a formal system of naming species of living things by giving each a name composed of two parts, bot ...
(''pungens'') means "ending in a sharp, hard point" referring to the leaf.
Distribution and habitat
Devil's pins grows in shallow soils among granite
Granite () is a coarse-grained (phaneritic) intrusive igneous rock composed mostly of quartz, alkali feldspar, and plagioclase. It forms from magma with a high content of silica and alkali metal oxides that slowly cools and solidifies undergro ...
, sandy and clay loams, outcrops, coastal limestone on flats, woodland, low heath and undulating sandplains. The species has a distribution on the south west coast in the Wheatbelt, Peel, South West
The points of the compass are a set of horizontal, radially arrayed compass directions (or azimuths) used in navigation and cartography. A compass rose is primarily composed of four cardinal directions—north, east, south, and west—each sepa ...
, Great Southern and Goldfields-Esperance regions of Western Australia.
References
{{Taxonbar, from=Q15485244
pungens
Endemic flora of Western Australia
Fabales of Australia
Taxa named by George Bentham
Plants described in 1837