Prickly shaggy pea

Podolobium ilicifolium, the prickly shaggy pea or holly-leaved pea, is an evergreen shrub in the Fabaceae family endemic to eastern Australia, where it grows in sclerophyll forests, heaths, and woodland margins on sandstone-derived soils in Queensland, New South Wales, Victoria, and Tasmania. Plants are slender, sparsely to densely branched, reaching 0.5 to 2 metres in height. The leaves are opposite, sessile, ovate to broadly elliptic, leathery and stiff, with strongly toothed, spiny margins reminiscent of holly leaves, dark glossy green above and paler beneath with a prominent reticulate venation. Flowering occurs from late winter through spring; the inflorescence is a short axillary or terminal raceme of striking papilionaceous flowers about one and a half centimetres across, with a yellow to orange-yellow standard marked with red streaks and a deep reddish-brown keel. The fruit is an ovoid, inflated, hairy legume containing several smooth seeds.