Acacia empelioclada
Acacia empelioclada is a species of flowering plant in the family Fabaceae and is endemic to the south of Western Australia. It is a spindly, erect shrub with ribbed, hairy branchlets, bipinnate leaves, spherical heads of cream-coloured to pale yellow flowers, and hairy or glabrous pods.
Description
Acacia empelioclada is spindly, erect shrub that typically grows to a height of and has ribbed, hairy, black to grey branchlets. Its leaves are bipinnate with up to three pairs of pinnae long on a petiole long, each pinna with three to ten narrowly oblong leaflets long, wide with flat to turned down or rolled down edges. The lower leaves have pinnae long with fewer leaflets. The flowers are borne in spherical heads of one or two in axils on peduncles long, each head with 25 to 43 cream-coloured to pale yellow flowers. Flowering occurs from July to October, and the pods are long and wide, containing seeds about long.
Taxonomy
Acacia empelioclada was first formally described in 1975 by Bruce Maslin from specimens he collected about north-west of Mount Bland, about south-west of Hopetoun in 1973. This species belongs to the Acacia browniana group of wattles but resembles both A. leioderma and A. lateriticola. The specific epithet refers to the "blackish colour of the mature branches". "However, the branches on juvenile plants and also often the branchlets on mature shrubs are red to brown in colour".
Distribution and habitat
This species of wattle grows on rocky hills in mallee heath, in sand or sandy laterite and in clay soil along watercourses in scrub, in near-coastal areas at Cape Riche and in the Fitzgerald River National Park in the Esperance Plains bioregion in southern Western Australia.