Australian indigo

Indigofera australis, Australian or austral indigo, is an erect, openly branched, soft-wooded shrub in the family Fabaceae growing to about 2 m tall, widespread across southern Australia from southeastern Western Australia through South Australia, Victoria, Tasmania and inland New South Wales north to southern and northeastern Queensland. It occurs in a remarkably broad range of habitats including dry sclerophyll eucalypt forests, woodland understorey, semi-arid scrubs, rocky ranges and the margins of rainforest. The pinnate leaves are about 10 cm long with eleven to twenty-one ovate to elliptic leaflets, soft and faintly velvety to the touch and slightly glaucous beneath. From July to November the shrub produces showy axillary racemes of typical pea-flowers, soft purple to pinkish-mauve with a darker keel. Fruits are slender, straight, cylindrical pods 3 to 6 cm long containing several seeds. Plants regenerate vigorously from a lignotuberous rootstock after fire, and being a legume they fix atmospheric nitrogen through root-nodule symbiosis.