Acacia difformis
Acacia difformis commonly known as drooping wattle, Wyalong wattle or mystery wattle is a species of flowering plant in the family Fabaceae and is endemic to continental south-eastern Australia. It is a shrub or rounded tree that often forms suckers and has narrowly lance-shaped to narrowly elliptic or linear phyllodes, spherical heads of light golden yellow flowers and pods that are thinly leathery to crusty, and more or less resemble a string of beads.
Description
Acacia difformis is an irregularly formed shrub or rounded tree that typically grows to a height of and often forms suckers, leading to thickets. Its branchlets are reddish brown and glabrous. The phyllodes are often pendulous, narrowly lance-shaped with the narrower end towards the base, or narrowly elliptic or linear, straight to shallowly curved down, mostly long, wide and glabrous with a prominent midvein. There are one or two glands up to above the base of the phyllodes. The flowers are borne in spherical heads in 8 to 25 racemes long on glabrous peduncles long, each head with 20 to 35 light golden yellow flowers. Flowering often occurs from January and February, sometimes between June and September, and the pods are thinly leathery to crusty, up to long and wide and more or less resemble a string of beads. The seeds are oblong to elliptic, long and dark brown with a club-shaped aril.
Taxonomy
Acacia difformis was first formally described in 1897 by Richard Baker in the Proceedings of the Linnean Society of New South Wales. The specific epithet means 'irregularly or unevenly or differently formed', apparently referring to Baker's comments about "broad' and 'narrow' phyllodes.
Drooping wattle grows in sandy soils, usually in mallee communities or open forest on the inland slopes of the Great Dividing Range from Cobar and Merrygoen in New South Wales to Dimboola in Victoria.