Pultenaea juniperina

Pultenaea juniperina, commonly known as prickly beauty or prickly bush-pea, is a stiff, erect, much-branched evergreen shrub of the family Fabaceae endemic to south-eastern Australia, occurring in Tasmania, Victoria and New South Wales in dry sclerophyll forest, heathland and rocky open woodland. It typically grows from 0.5 to 2 metres in height with rigid, slender, glabrous to sparsely pubescent stems. The alternate, sessile or very shortly petiolate leaves are crowded along the stems, narrowly lanceolate to almost linear, 6 to 18 millimetres long and only 1 to 2 millimetres wide, stiff and concave above, with a sharply pungent spinose apex giving the species both its common and specific names. Small papilionate flowers about 8 to 10 millimetres long are produced in profusion in spring at the ends of short lateral shoots in the upper axils, the standard bright yellow with reddish or orange-brown markings and the keel deeper red. The fruit is a small, ovoid, slightly inflated pod 4 to 6 millimetres long containing one or two seeds.