Citation: E. Meyer, Comm. Pl. Afr. Aust. 151 (1836).

Synonymy: Not Applicable

Common name: Thorny (or prickly) coral tree.

Description:
Sprawling rigid shrubs, divaricately branched, 1.2-1.8 m high, with tuberous roots; recurved prickles persistent on twigs; leaves deciduous, on slender spiny villous petioles, lateral leaflets on short petiolules 2-4 mm long, suborbicular, acute; 2-3 cm across; terminal leaflet on a petiolule 2-5 cm long, larger, obcordate, apiculate, 3-5 cm across; all leaflets armed with prickle(s) under-neath, rather thin, glabrous and glaucous; stipules and stipels minute, glandular, truncate.

Racemes lateral or terminal, shortly pedunculate or subsessile, few-flowered or rarely long-pedunculate, lax and many-flowered; flowers 3-5 cm long, on petioles 2-5 mm long; calyx campanulate, c. 1 cm long, greyish, densely stellate-tomentose, teeth minute, apiculate; standard oblong, vermillion-red, tipped with yellow or yellow suffused with green, parallel-nerved; wings hardly protruding from the calyx, linear-oblong, acuminate, white; keel smaller, oblong; white; stamens free for two-thirds of their length.

Pod stipitate, armed with prickles.

Image source: fig. 311A in J.P. Jessop and H.R. Toelken Ed. 1986. Flora of South Australia (4th edn).

Published illustration: E. F. Hennessy (1972) South African erythrinas, t. 8; Krukoff & Barneby (1974) Lloydia 37, 3:410.

Distribution:    Native to the Cape Province of South Africa, introduced as an ornamental. Forming dense thickets; well adapted to dry areas. Conservation status: naturalised Flowering time: spring, when it is usually leafless.

SA Distribution Map based on current data relating to specimens held in the State Herbarium of South Australia

Biology: No text

Author: Not yet available