Acacia declinata
Acacia declinata is a species of flowering plant in the family Fabaceae and is endemic to the south-west of Western Australia. It is a prostrate shrub with sessile, sharply pointed phyllodes, spherical heads of golden yellow flowers and linear, thinly leathery pods.Description
Acacia declinata is a dense, intricately branched, prostrate shrub that typically grows to a height of with terete branchlets densely covered with short, soft hairs. Its phyllodes are sessile, sharply pointed and tapering with a rigid, brown tip and glabrous, long and wide. There are triangular to tapering, semi-persistent stipules up to long at the base of the phyllodes. The flowers are borne in one or two spherical heads in axils on a peduncle long, each head in diameter with 9 to 20 golden yellow flowers. Flowering occurs in August and September, and the pods are linear, thinly leathery, up to long and wide and strongly raised over the seeds. The seeds are oblong to broadly elliptic, about long and glossy black with a helmet shaped aril near the tip.Taxonomy
Acacia declinata was first formally described in 1990 by the botanists Richard Sumner Cowan and Bruce Maslin in The Western Australian Naturalist from specimens collected near Amelup by Alison Marjorie Ashby in 1972. The specific epithet means 'growing downwards in a curve'.This species of wattle is restricted to near Borden, Manypeaks and Boxwood Hill where it grows in tall shrubland and woodland in the Avon Wheatbelt, Esperance Plains, Jarrah Forest, Mallee and Swan Coastal Plain bioregions of south-western Western Australia.Conservation status
Acacia declinata in listed as "Priority Four" by the Government of Western Australia Department of Biodiversity, Conservation and Attractions, meaning that it is rare or near threatened.