Acacia baeuerlenii


Acacia baeuerlenii is a species of flowering plant in the family Fabaceae and is endemic to a small area in eastern Australia. It is a slender shrub with mostly narrowly elliptic phyllodes, racemes of spherical heads of creamy-white flowers, and leathery pods.

Description

Acacia baeuerlenii is a slender shrub that typically grows to a height of and has angled, ribbed and hairy branchlets. Its phyllodes are erect, narrowly elliptic, straight to slightly curved, long and wide, leathery and glabrous. The flowers are arranged in up to three spherical heads on a raceme long on a peduncle long. Each head is in diameter with 30 to 40 creamy-white flowers. Flowering occurs from June to August and the pods are narrowly oblong, leathery, up to long and wide, raised on opposite sides over alternate seeds. The seeds are broadly oblong-elliptic, dark brown, long with a thick, fleshy aril.

Taxonomy

The species was first formally described in 1896 by the botanists Joseph Maiden and Richard Thomas Baker in the Proceedings of the Linnean Society of New South Wales from specimens collected at New Italy by William Baeuerlen. This species is similar to A. tessellata and A. venulosa.

Distribution and habitat

This species of wattle is found from near Helidon is south-east Queensland and south to Maclean, Red Rock and the Gibraltar Range in northern New South Wales, where it grows on sandy soil in forest.