Bold red-coloured pea attracts from roadside

This is the flower of the Dwarf Edge-pea. It's attached to a small, scrappy plant that is really only obvious when it flowers. The flowers themselves are at most two centimetres across, but the yellow-blotched red colour makes them stand out against grey sandy soil.  

When I saw it, in November, I was taking a long-weekend at Birregurra, just west of Geelong, and took a day trip down towards Anglesea. At Gherang, in some heathy woodland beside the road.

Dwarf Edge-pea thrives after frequent fire and I imagine it would be soon overshadowed and perhaps outcompeted in unburnt forest. It was happy on this disturbed and regularly slashed roadside.

It's a Gompholobium, an Australian pea genus with leaves usually (but not always) divided into three, and the male parts of the flower (the stamens) all free from each other. You won't see that latter feature unless you peal apart of the typical pea flower with its wings and keel. 

There are thirty species of Gompholobium, many of them with large, yellow flowers. This one has a bright red flower and tiny leaves. 

It's Gompholobium ecostatum, with the species name meaning no ribs, a reference to the flower buds. Which are clearly not ribbed. 

This species, found west from Wilsons Promontory in Victoria through into South Australia, and dipping onto Flinders Island (Tasmania) in Bass Strait, was only described in 1965. 

Before then it was assumed to be part of Gompholobium huegelii, which usually has yellow flowers and stems usually without hairs. Unlike this species...

Historically, it was treated as a variety of another yellow-flowered species, Gompholobium minus, from New South Wales.

But it's the red of the flower that reveals an otherwise rather obscure plant and shapeless plant. Happy new year!