VicFlora: Daviesia devito

Dense shrub to 1 (1.5) m tall, apparently not root-suckering; branches glabrous; branchlets terete, green or yellowish, becoming longitudinally ribbed or wrinkled on drying. Stipules triangular, to 1 mm long (often indistinct on older phyllodes); phyllodes terete, 5–15(–30) mm long, 1–1.8 mm diam., spreading to slightly ascending, green, smooth, rigid, pungent (spine to 1 mm long), continuous with branchlet at base, longitudinally ribbed when dry; midrib not apparent. Inflorescences 1 or 2 per axil, racemose, mostly 2–5-flowered, rachis 2–7 mm long; peduncle 0–1 mm long; pedicels to c. 1 mm long, subtended by an obovate, concave, recurved bract c. 1 mm long. Calyx c. 2 mm long including c. 1 mm receptacle, teeth short, apiculate, upper 2 partly united, grey-purple, sometimes pruinose near base; corolla mostly yellow-brown; standard transversely elliptic, 5–6 mm long, c. 5 mm wide, yellow-brown with a yellowish centre. Pod broadly obovate to obtriangular, 5–7 mm long, 4–6 mm wide; seeds ovoid, c. 2.8 mm long, compressed. Flowers Sep.–Nov.

LoM, MuM, Wim, VRiv, Gold. Also SA, NSW. Mostly from western mallee areas (Little and Big Deserts), with isolated occurrences betwen Inglewood and Wedderburn.

Previously included (as subsp. humilis) in Daviesia benthamii but that species is now restricted to Western Australia. The species epithet is a lighthearted reference to it being the smaller one of a pair including Daviesia schwarzenegger, after a movie ('Twins') in which the two so-named actors played very unalike twins. Apart from stature, it is distinguised from D. schwarzenegger by the presence of stipules, larger flowers and stems and phyllodes that are usually distinctly longitudinally ribbed rather than wrinkled when dry. All three species (i.e. D. benthamii, D. devito and D. schwarzenegger) were previously included in a broad concept of D. genistifolia in Victoria (e.g. Willis 1973).