Acacia auratiflora
Acacia auratiflora, commonly known as the orange-flowered wattle, is a species of flowering plant in the family Fabaceae and is endemic to a restricted part of Western Australia. It is a shrub with narrowly elliptic phyllodes, spherical spikes of golden-yellow flowers, and densely hairy pods.
Description
Acacia auratiflora is a spreading shrub that typically grows to a height of, its branchlets covered with golden or white hairs. Its phyllodes are leathery, pale green, long and wide with a hooked tip. The flowers are golden-yellow and arranged in a spherical head in axils, each head with 32 to 42 flowers and in diameter on a peduncle mostly long. Flowering mostly occurs from August to October, and the pods are densely covered with golden-yellow hairs.Taxonomy
Acacia auratiflora was first formally described in 1999 by the botanists Richard Sumner Cowan and Bruce Maslin in the journal Nuytsia from specimens collected by Mary Tindale about east of Lake Grace in 1973. The specific epithet means 'golden flowers', referring to the colour of the flower parts and the hairs on them.Distribution
This species of wattle grows in sand, clay or loam in open scrub in plains and wet depressions that can form ephemeral ponds, between Lake Grace and Newdegate in the Mallee bioregion of Western Australia. A total of 15 populations were recorded during a survey in 2009 with a total of 1,200 mature plants over an area of. The species is found amongst open shrub mallee communities or low Eucalyptus salubris woodlands with Melaleuca thickets.Associated species include many species of Eucalyptus, Melaleuca uncinata, M. adnata, M. lateriflor, Grevillia huegelii and Phebalium filifolium.