Senna heptanthera is a species of flowering plant in the family Fabaceae and is endemic to Arnhem Land in the north of the Northern Territory. It is a creeping, herbaceous perennial with pinnate leaves with one or two pairs of broadly egg-shaped leaflets, and yellow flowers arranged in groups of eight to ten, with seven fertile stamens in each flower.
Description Senna heptanthera is a creeping, herbaceous perennial that has leaves up to long on a petiole up to long. The leaves are pinnate with one or two pairs of broadly egg-shaped leaflets, long and wide, spaced up to apart. There is a single, sessile gland between the lowest pair of leaflets. The flowers are yellow and usually arranged in groups of eight to ten in upper leaf axils on a peduncle long, each flower on a pedicel up to long. The petals are up to long and there are seven fertile stamens in each flower, the anthers about long. Flowering occurs in February and March and the fruit is a flat pod.
Taxonomy This species was first formally described in 1876 by Ferdinand von Mueller who gave it the name Cassia heptanthera in Fragmenta Phytographiae Australiae, from specimens collected near the Liverpool River. In 1989, Barbara Rae Randell transferred the species to the genus Senna as Senna heptanthera in the Journal of the Adelaide Botanic Gardens.
Distribution and habitat Senna heptanthera occurs in northern Arnhem Land.
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