Swainsona laxa, the skeleton pea,[2] yellow swainson-pea, yellow Darling pea,[3] or sandhill swainsona,[4] is a species of flowering plant in the family Fabaceae and is endemic to inland Australia.

It is an erect, shrublike herb, often appearing leafless, sometimes with 13 to 17 broadly egg-shaped leaflets, and racemes of 15 to 20 usually yellow flowers.

Swainsona laxa is an erect or ascending shrublike herb that can grow to a height of 2 m (7 ft), and has mostly glabrous stems.

[2][3][5] Swainsona laxa was first formally described in 1849 by Robert Brown in the botanical appendix of Charles Sturt's Narrative of an Expedition into Central Australia.

[8] Skeleton pea grows on the upper slopes of sand ridges in western New South Wales, the north-west of South Australia, southern Northern Territory and Queensland.