Acacia fagonioides


Acacia fagonioides is a species of flowering plant in the family Fabaceae and is endemic to the south-west of Western Australia. It is an intricately branched, spiny shrub with bipinnate leaves, spherical heads of yellow flowers and glabrous pods.

Description

Acacia fagonioides is an intricately branched shrub that typically grows to a height of and has spines long at the base of the leaves. The leaves are bipinnate with one pair of pinnae long, each pinna with two to four pairs of narrowly egg-shaped to narrowly oblong pinnules long and wide. The leaves are glaucous to subglaucous and glabrous to subglabrous and lack a petiole, but are on a stalk about long. The flowers are borne in spherical heads on the upper half of the axillary spines on a hairy peduncle long. Each head has 13 to 25 yellow flowers. Flowering occurs in June and July, and the pods are long, wide, glabrous and covered with a thin, powdery bloom. The seeds are elliptic to circular, inflated, long.

Taxonomy

Acacia fagonioides was first formally described in 1842 in Hooker's London Journal of Botany from specimens collected in the Swan River Colony by James Drummond. The specific epithet means 'Fagonia-like'.
This species and Acacia epacantha are unique in the Acacia pulchella group of wattles in having their flowers borne on axillary spines.

Distribution and habitat

This species of wattle grows in sandy heath near Eneabba and in lateritic soil in marri forest at Toodyay and has a disjunct distribution near Eneabba, Cervantes and Toodyay, in the Avon Wheatbelt, Geraldton Sandplains and Jarrah Forest bioregions of south-western Western Australia.

Conservation status

Acacia fagonioides is listed as "not threatened" by the Government of Western Australia Department of Biodiversity, Conservation and Attractions.