Hop bitter-pea flowers have the classic ‘pea’ shape but like many other Australian native peas have yellow and brown flowers so the feature is hardly diagnostic
With Ken Slee
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Hop Bitter-pea (Daviesia latifolia)
This native Australian plant is a member of the pea family; one of the very many shrubby plants that occur in sambar country. As far as the sambar are concerned it is perhaps one of the more important browse plants as it is common and widespread, occurring right through their range in Victoria. It also occurs in Tasmania, New South Wales and Queensland.
Hop bitter-pea grows as a multi-stemmed shrub up to about two metres tall from the coast up to around 1,800 metres elevation. It has tough broad leaves around four to eight centimetres long and three wide. Leaves have a very prominent network of veins and are generally dark green and shiny. Apparently these leaves taste bitter (and there are references to them having been used to replace hops in beer brewing), hence the name, but I haven’t personally put this to the test.
Hop bitter-pea produces classic yellow and brown ‘pea’ flowers in the spring and small triangular pods form and mature by summer, splitting open to discharge the single seed in each pod.
Hop bitter-pea can be heavily browsed by sambar (and probably wallabies, brumbies, cattle and insects too). Sambar browsing is usually very easy to identify as the tough leaves tend to show jagged edges where they have been chewed.
For some unknown reason many of the hop bitter-pea plants in the areas that I was hunting in 2015 were dying. Perhaps they have a short life like many other plants that have a life cycle that includes wildfire, or perhaps they succumbed to a series of heavy frosts or to a disease – whatever the cause, in many areas it looked as though they had been sprayed with herbicide.
Hop bitter-pea usually grows as widely spaced plants on dry or rocky slopes. However, it can also form dense stands on occasions in favourable environments after wildfire. When this occurs it can be virtually impassable – getting caught on a steep north-facing alpine slope in a tangle of fallen alpine ash spars interwoven with dense scrub dominated by hop bitter-pea must come close to a sambar hunter’s worst possible nightmare! When it gets to that stage, not even a sambar will find this habitat enticing, despite its potential as a feed source!
The growth habit, tough veined leaves and small triangular-shaped seed pods are features of hop bitter-pea. Few hunters will, however, be in the bush when seed pods are produced
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