Moreton island rattlepod

Crotalaria pallida, commonly known as smooth rattlebox or streaked rattlepod, is an erect, short-lived perennial herb or soft-wooded shrub in the Fabaceae growing 0.5-2 m tall, with grooved, finely appressed-pubescent stems. It is probably native to tropical Africa but is now pantropical, naturalised throughout the Americas, southern Asia, Australia and many tropical islands, where it colonises roadsides, fallow fields, sandy waste places and disturbed open ground. The leaves are alternate, trifoliolate with elliptic to obovate leaflets 3-8 cm long, the upper surface nearly glabrous and the lower silky-pubescent. From the stem tips arise long, terminal, many-flowered erect racemes 15-40 cm long bearing yellow papilionaceous flowers about 12 mm long, often streaked with fine reddish-brown veins on the standard petal. The mature legume is a cylindrical, inflated pod 3-5 cm long, smooth, becoming brown and stiff, within which the loose, kidney-shaped seeds rattle audibly when shaken — the source of the common name. Like most Crotalaria, the plant contains toxic pyrrolizidine alkaloids.