Acacia abbreviata


Acacia abbreviata is a species of flowering plant in the family Fabaceae and is endemic to arid parts of northern Australia. It is a spreading, glabrous, resinous shrub with linear to narrowly oblong phyllodes, spike of golden flowers, and linear to lance-shaped pods.

Description

The resinous shrub has a spreading habit and typically grows to a height of with a width of. The generally smooth pale grey-brown coloured bark is minutely fissured. The angular yellow to red-brown branchlets have small resinous hairs and obscure ridges. The linear green phyllodes occur in groups of six at the nodes. They have a narrowly oblong or narrowly oblanceolate shape and a length of and a width of with indistinct nerves. It blooms between April and October producing cylindrical flower-spikes with a length of packed with golden coloured flowers. The flat and sub-woody seed pods that form after flowering have a linear-oblanceolate shape that tapers toward the base. The pods are in length and wide, have prominent margins and open elastically from the apex. The seeds inside are arranged obliquely to longitudinally. The brown seeds have a narrowly oblong shape and a length of and have a narrowly turbinate aril.

Taxonomy

Acacia abbreviata was first formally described in 1980 by the botanist Bruce Maslin in the Journal of the Adelaide Botanic Gardens from a specimen collected by John Richard Maconochie in the Tanami Desert in 1970. It was reclassified as Racosperma abbreviatum in 2003 by Leslie Pedley in the journal Austrobaileya, then transferred back to genus Acacia in 2006. The specific epithet means "shortened", referring to the very short phyllodes.

Distribution

The shrub is found in a small area of the Tanami Desert in the Northern Territory close to the Western Australian border. It usually grows on stony lateritic ridges and plains where it grows in shallow clay loamy soils as a part of spinifex communities.