Senna charlesiana is a species of flowering plant in the family Fabaceae and is endemic to Western Australia. It is an erect shrub with cylindrical leaves, sometimes with one or two pairs of cylindrical leaflets, and yellow flowers arranged in pairs or groups of three or four, with ten fertile stamens in each flower.
Description Senna charlesiana is an erect, compact or straggling shrub that typically grows to a height of up to , its stems and foliage softly-hairy. The leaves are cylindrical, sometimes flattened, long on a petiole long and about wide, sometimes with one or two pairs of cylindrical leaflets long and about wide. The flowers are yellow and arranged in upper leaf axils in pairs or groups of up to four on a peduncle long, each flower on a pedicel long. The petals are about long and there are ten fertile stamens, the anthers about long. Flowering occurs in winter, and the fruit is a flat pod long.
Taxonomy This species was first formally described in 1966 by David Eric Symon who gave it the name Cassia charlesiana in the Transactions of the Royal Society of South Australia from specimens collected by Charles Gardner near Pintharuka in 1945. In 1998, Barbara Rae Randell and Bryan Alwyn Barlow transferred the species to Senna as Senna charlesiana in the Flora of Australia. The specific epithet (charlesiana) honours the collector of the type specimens.
Distribution and habitat Senna charlesiana grows in arid shrubland from near the Murchison River to the southern inland of Western Australia in the Avon Wheatbelt, Central Kimberley, Coolgardie, Esperance Plains, Gascoyne, Geraldton Sandplains, Mallee, Murchison, Pilbara and Yalgoo bioregions.
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