Acacia aulacocarpa
Acacia aulacocarpa, commonly known as Papua New Guinea brown wattle, New Guinea wattle, golden-flowered salwood or lancewood, is a species of flowering plant in the family Fabaceae and is native to New Guinea, Queensland and New South Wales. It is a shrub or tree, with elliptic to narrowly elliptic phyllodes, cylindrical heads of bright golden-yellow flowers, and narrowly oblong pods up to long.
Description
Acacia aulacocarpa grows as a shrub with a height of or as a small tree with a typical height of but can reach heights of up to. The bark is smooth, or cracked with shallow fissures on the largest trees. The phyllodes are dimidiate to more or less sickle-shaped, mostly long, wide, thinly leathery, glabrous and more or less glaucous. The flowers are bright golden-yellow and borne in one or two cylindrical spikes long on a peduncle long. Flowering occurs between January and June and the pods are narrowly oblong, sometimes twisted, long and usually wide, containing brown to black seeds long with a greyish-cream aril.
Taxonomy
The species was first formally described in 1842 by George Bentham, from an unpublished description by Allan Cunningham in the London Journal of Botany from specimens collected at Bowen. The specific epithet means 'furrow-fruit', referring to the markings on the pods.
Distribution
Acacia aulacocarpa has a discontinuous distribution, mainly in coastal areas and nearby tablelands from near Daintree to near Brisbane in Queensland, and near Grafton in New South Wales. It grows in clay or loam along watercourses, in sandy soil on rocky outcrops in forest and shrubland or in woodland on sandstone.