Acacia beckleri
Acacia beckleri commonly known as Barrier Range wattle, is a flowering plant in the family Acacia. It is an upright or spreading shrub with green or bluish-green leaves and spherical heads of yellow flowers.
Description
Acacia beckleri is a decumbent, spreading or upright shrub high with reddish-brown stems and branches. The phyllodes are lance-shaped with the narrower end towards the base, or narrowly elliptic, straight or slightly curved. The phyllodes are green to pale green, faintly veined, long and wide, tapering at the base and rounded or pointed at the end. The flower are usually borne in spherical heads on a peduncle mostly long, the heads in diameter with 50 to 140 dark yellow or golden-yellow flowers. Flowering occurs from May to August and the fruit is a straight, flat, reddish-brown pod, mostly straight-sided to barely constricted between the seeds.Taxonomy and naming
Barrier Range wattle was first formally described in 1965 by Mary Tindale and the description was published in the Supplement to J.M.Black's Flora of South Australia. It is named after Dr Hermann Beckler, the botanist on the Burke and Wills expedition in 1861, who collected the type specimen in a "glen to the gorge Nothungbulla, Hodgson's Basin, near the Barrier Range.In 2008, Martin C. O'Leary described Acacia beckleri subsp. megaspherica, and the name, and that of the autonym are accepted by the Australian Plant Census:Acacia beckleri Tindale subsp. beckleri, has peduncles wide and long, and 54 to 67 flowers in each head.Acacia beckleri subsp. megaspherica O'Leary has peduncles wide and long, and 80 to 140 flowers in each head.
Distribution and habitat
Acacia beckleri grows mainly on slopes in shallow soils on the Eyre Peninsula and east to the Olary Ranges, in the Gammon Ranges and Barrier Range in South Australia and near Cobar and Jerilderie in western New South Wales.Subspecies megaspherica is only found in South Australia in the Gammon Ranges and Mount Hack, and south through Wilpena Pound.