Acacia barringtonensis
Acacia barringtonensis, commonly known as Barrington wattle, is a species of flowering plant in the family Fabaceae and is endemic to New South Wales. It is an erect or spreading shrub or small tree with narrowly elliptic or narrowly oblong phyllodes, spherical heads of golden-yellow flowers and straight or slightly curved pods up to long.
Description
Acacia barringtonensis is an erect or spreading shrub or small tree that typically grows to a height of with angled, minutely hairy branchlets. Its phyllodes are narrowly elliptic or narrowly oblong, long, wide, usually with minute hairs pressed against the surface and a gland usually above the pulvinus. The flowers are borne in racemes mostly long, each head spherical in diameter with mostly eight to sixteen golden-yellow flowers on a pedicel long. Flowering occurs from September to November and the pods are straight to slightly curved, firmly papery to thinly leathery, long and wide. The seeds are oblong to elliptic, black and slightly shiny, long with a white, thread-like aril on the end.
Taxonomy
Acacia barringtonensis was first formally described in 1975 by the botanist Mary Tindale in the journal Telopea from specimens collected on the Barrington Plateau north-east of Scone in 1960. The specific epithet is a reference to Barrington Tops located in the Mount Royal Range where the type specimen was found. It is closely related to A. clunies-rossiae , A. caesiella and A. dorothea.
Distribution
Barrington wattle is found in north eastern New South Wales, commonly in the Great Dividing Range from Gibraltar Range National Park in the north down to Barrington Tops National Park in the south where it is often situated around creeks and among or along the edges of swamps growing in granite or basalt based soils as a part of Eucalyptus woodland communities, usually at altitudes or higher.