Acacia crenulata
Acacia crenulata is a species of flowering plant in the family Fabaceae and is endemic to the a small area in the south-west of Western Australia. It is a bushy, rounded shrub or tree with glabrous, wavy, ribbed branchlets, narrowly elliptic to linear phyllodes, spherical heads of golden yellow flowers and linear to slightly curved pods.
Description
Acacia crenulata is a bushy, rounded shrub or tree that typically grows to a height of and has glabrous, ribbed, wavy branchlets. The phyllodes are narrowly elliptic to linear-elliptic, long and wide with wavy, resinous edges and a prominent central vein with many indistinct closely parallel secondary veins. The flowers are borne in one or two spherical heads on peduncles long, each head abour in diameter with 20 to 25 golden yellow flowers. Flowering has been recorded in September and October, and the pods are linear, straight to slightly curved, thinly leathery to crust-like, up to long and wide and glabrous. The seeds are oblong to egg-shaped, about long and mottled with a yellow aril.
Taxonomy
Acacia crenulata was first formally described in 1999 by Richard Sumner Cowan and Bruce Maslin in the journal Nuytsia from specimens collected by Maslin east of Carrabin in 1992. The specific epithet means 'crenulate', a term commonly applied to leaf margins with rounded teeth, alluding to the edges of the phyllodes.
Distribution and habitat
This species of wattle is only known from Chiddarcooping - Walyahmoning Rock areas about west of Southern Cross and near Bullabulling in the Avon Wheatbelt and Coolgardie bioregions, where it mostly grows in heavy soils and sandy clay-loam on rocky outcrops, often in association with low, Eucalyptus wandoo woodland and other species of Acacia, Allocasuarina campestris and Melaleuca uncinata.