It is a spreading or ascending perennial shrub-like herb with imparipinnate leaves with 15 to 25 linear to narrowly lance-shaped leaflets with the narrower end towards the base, and racemes of 2 to 12 purple or mauve to pink flowers.

Swainsona procumbens is a spreading or ascending, perennial shrub-like herb, with more or less glabrous smooth stems, and grows up to 50 cm (20 in) high.

The flowers are arranged in racemes of 2 to 12, the flowers mostly 8–15 mm (0.31–0.59 in) long, with sepals joined at the base, forming a tube 2.0–2.5 mm (0.079–0.098 in) long, the lobes longer than the tube.

[3][4][5][6] Swainsona procumbens was first formally described in 1853 by Ferdinand von Mueller who gave it the name Cyclogyne procumbens, in the journal Linnaea: Ein Journal für die Botanik in ihrem ganzen Umfange, oder Beiträge zur Pflanzenkunde from specimens collected near the Broughton River,[7][8] but in 1859, Mueller reassigned it to the genus, Swainsona as S. procumbens in his Fragmenta Phytographiae Australiae.

[11] Broughton pea grows on heavy, frequently water logged soils or on sand dunes and is found on the western slopes and plains of inland New South Wales, in inland Victoria and in Queensland.