Sphaerolobium alatum

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Family Fabaceae

Taxonomy: Sphaerolobium alatum Benth.

Synonyms: none listed in the APC 2026-07-30

Distribution (APC): WA

Profiles: APC, Flora of Australia, ALA, iNaturalist, Florabase, ATRP

Traits

Top source datasets: Burrows_2008_2 (5), Burrows_2020 (5), Clarke_2015 (2), Collette_2021 (1), Pekin_2011 (5), Sjostrom_2006 (4), WAH_2022_2 (4), WAH_2023_2 (3), Wenk_2022 (2), Wenk_2023 (1), Wheeler_2002 (4). See below for a full list of sources.
Summary: AusTraits contains 20 traits from 36 records in 11 datasets.

Traits by category (click to expand). For categorical traits, the values are listed. For numerical traits, the mean and range are shown.

fire response

resprouting_capacity (categorical): fire_killed (2); resprouts (2) [sources: Burrows_2008_2; Burrows_2020; Clarke_2015; Pekin_2011]
post_fire_recruitment (categorical): post_fire_recruitment (1) [sources: Clarke_2015]
fire_time_from_fire_to_flowering (numerical): 21 mo (21-21 mo) [sources: Burrows_2020]

flower morphology

sex_type (categorical): hermaphrodite (1) [sources: Sjostrom_2006]

fruit morphology

fruit_type (categorical): legume (1) [sources: Sjostrom_2006]
fruit_fleshiness (categorical): dry (1) [sources: Sjostrom_2006]
fruit_dehiscence (categorical): dehiscent (1) [sources: Sjostrom_2006]

leaf morphology

leaf_compoundness (categorical): simple (1) [sources: Wheeler_2002]
plant_photosynthetic_organ (categorical): cladode (1) [sources: WAH_2023_2]

life history

plant_growth_form (categorical): shrub (3) [sources: WAH_2022_2; Wenk_2022; Wheeler_2002]
life_history (categorical): perennial (6) [sources: Burrows_2008_2; Burrows_2020; Pekin_2011; WAH_2022_2; Wenk_2023; Wheeler_2002]
woodiness_detailed (categorical): woody (2) [sources: WAH_2022_2; Wenk_2022]
stem_growth_habit (categorical): open (1) [sources: WAH_2022_2]
nitrogen_fixing (categorical): nitrogen_fixer (1) [sources: Pekin_2011]
root_structure (categorical): arbuscular_mycorrhizal (1) [sources: Pekin_2011]
reproductive_maturity (numerical): 1.75 a (1.75-1.75 a) [sources: Burrows_2020]
seedbank_location (categorical): soil_seedbank (2) [sources: Burrows_2008_2; Burrows_2020]
seed_dormancy_class (categorical): physical_dormancy (1) [sources: Collette_2021]
bud_bank_location (categorical): basal_buds (1); none (1) [sources: Burrows_2008_2; Pekin_2011]

whole plant morphology

plant_height (numerical): 0.57 m (0.2-0.7 m) [sources: WAH_2023_2; Wheeler_2002]

Sources

dataset_id	n_traits	n_records	reference
Burrows_2008_2	5	5	N. D. Burrows, G. Wardell-Johnson, and B. Ward. “Post-fire juvenile period of plants in south-west Australia forests and implications for fire management”. Journal of the Royal Society of Western Australia 91 (2008), pp. 163-174. ISSN: 0035922X. url: http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11937/19156 (visited on 03/27/2025).
Burrows_2020	5	5	N. Burrows. Data from 'Plant Ecological Attributes' theme, NatureMap, DBCA, WA. 2020.
Pekin_2011	5	5	B. K. Pekin, R. S. Wittkuhn, M. M. Boer, C. Macfarlane, and P. F. Grierson. “Plant functional traits along environmental gradients in seasonally dry and fire-prone ecosystem”. Journal of Vegetation Science 22 (2011), pp. 1009-1020. doi: 10.1111/j.1654-1103.2011.01323.x.
Sjostrom_2006	4	4	A. Sjöström and C. L. Gross. “Life-history characters and phylogeny are correlated with extinction risk in the Australian angiosperms”. Journal of Biogeography 33.2 (2006), pp. 271-290. doi: 10.1111/j.1365-2699.2005.01393.x.
WAH_2022_2	4	4	Western Australian Herbarium. Florabase—the Western Australian Flora.. accessed on 14 September, 2022.. 2022. url: https://florabase.dpaw.wa.gov.au/.
Wheeler_2002	4	4	J. R. Wheeler, N. G. Marchant, and M. Lewington. Flora of the south west: Bunbury, Augusta, Denmark. Australian Biological Resources Study ; University of Western Australia Press, 2002. ISBN: 9780642568168.
WAH_2023_2	2	3	Western Australian Herbarium. Florabase—the Western Australian Flora.. accessed on 14 September, 2022.. 2023. url: https://florabase.dpaw.wa.gov.au/.
Clarke_2015	2	2	P. J. Clarke, M. J. Lawes, B. P. Murphy, J. Russell-Smith, C. E. Nano, R. Bradstock, N. J. Enright, J. B. Fontaine, C. R. Gosper, I. Radford, J. J. Midgley, and R. M. Gunton. “A synthesis of postfire recovery traits of woody plants in Australian ecosystems”. Science of The Total Environment 534 (2015), pp. 31-42. doi: 10.1016/j.scitotenv.2015.04.002.
Wenk_2022	2	2	E. Wenk. “Unpublished data: Australian plant growth forms dataset”. 2022.
Collette_2021	1	1	J. C. Collette and M. K. J. Ooi. “Distribution of seed dormancy classes across a fire-prone continent: effects of rainfall seasonality and temperature”. Annals of Botany 127.5 (2021), pp. 613-620. doi: 10.1093/aob/mcaa203.
Wenk_2023	1	1	E. Wenk. “Unpublished data: Australian plant life history dataset, University of New South Wales, Sydney”. 2023.