It covers and can smother trees and fences, it scrambles along the ground and is one very tough native plant that can "take over". Thus we have mixed feelings about it but tolerate it as it is native to our area and would have been a component of the original vegetation. It is a host plant to the Common Crow butterfly (maybe other butterflies as well) and provides nectar when in flower to bees - they were buzzing around the flowers above.
Botanically it is part of the dogbane family and according to wiki the genus is named after an English Dr- James Parsons by another Dr - Robert Brown - who accompanied Matthew Flinders as the botanist on his exploration of Australia - here is the wiki link about Robert Brown :
http://dictionary.sensagent.com/Robert_Brown_%28botanist%29/en-en/
Another site :
http://www.survival.org.au/bf_parsonsia_straminea.php
states that the beans and roots are edible but the only scientific paper that could be located mentioned pyrrolidizine alkaloids in a related species - P laevigata
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/003194229184253O
as such I wouldn't be recommending it without further published studies on it.
Also being a member of the dogbane family - this contains plants with some pretty toxic members such as oleander and has provided us with drugs for heart failure, hypertension and cancer treatments makes me even more wary of it as an edible plant.
The name Monkey rope is inappropriate in my opinion (no monkeys in Australia) and the name Common Silkpod is ok as it does indeed produce a silk like plume of hairs attached to seeds to help distribute the seeds by wind. There is an Aboriginal name for a related species but I couldn't find the Aboriginal name for this one.
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