Pedleya
species of legume
Pedleya acanthoclada, commonly known as thorny pea, is the only species of flowering plant in the genus Pedleya of the family Fabaceae. It is a small shrub with pink or purplish flowers, and leaves in groups of three.
Description
Pedleya acanthoclada is a small shrub about 1 m (3 ft 3 in) high with stiff, smooth branches bearing thorns. The leaves are in groups of three and smooth, the middle leaf longer than lateral leaves, the apex rounded, the stipules about 1 mm (0.039 in) long and the petiole 2–4 mm (0.079–0.157 in) long. The pink to purple flowers are about 8 mm (0.31 in) long, in 1 or 2 pairs or clusters near the end of branches on a pedicel about 1 mm (0.039 in) long. Flowering occurs in summer and the fruit is a pod about 50 mm (2.0 in) long made up of 2-7 segments, each segment about 9–12 mm (0.35–0.47 in) long.
Taxonomy and naming
Pedleya acanthoclada was first formally described in 1861 by Ferdinand von Mueller, who gave it the name Desmodium acanthocladum in his Fragmenta Phytographiae Australiae, from specimens collected near the Clarence River by Hermann Beckler.
In 2018, Hiroyoshi Ohashi and Kazuaki Ohashi transferred the species to Pedleya in the Journal of Japanese Botany. The genus name honours Leslie Pedley, (1930–2018), who was an Australian botanist who specialised in the genus Acacia. The specific epithet (acanthoclada) means "spiny shoot".
“Pedleya” enters the record as species of legume. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Pedleya, species and legume can confirm, complicate or overturn.
Why this record matters
“Pedleya” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Pedleya, species and legume provides the most credible route into that argument.
Datasets, specimens, observations and peer-reviewed methods provide the appropriate test for the technical claims summarized here. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 30, 2024. The linked authority identifier is Q94440653. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1861, 2018 and 1930.
Scientific names, classifications and consensus can change while older terminology persists in catalogues and historical literature. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
How to read it
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Three-step research path
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Questions for further research
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This entry incorporates text from “Pedleya” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.