Acacia falciformis
Acacia falciformis, commonly known as mountain hickory, broad-leaved hickory, hickory wattle, black wattle, tanning wattle or large-leaf hickory wattle, is a species of flowering plant in the family Fabaceae and is endemic to eastern continental Australia. It is a shrub or tree, with glabrous branchlets, usually sickle-shaped phyllodes, spherical heads of creamy yellow flowers and thinly leathery, glabrous pods.
Description
Acacia falciformis is an erect or spreading shrub or tree that typically grows to a height of, sometimes higher, and has finely or deeply fissured, grey-black bark. Its branchlets are glabrous, angled at first but soon terete. The phyllodes are more or less pendulous, usually sickle-shaped, long, wide, grey-green to glaucous, and glabrous. There is a prominent midrib, and a gland above the base of the phyllodes.The flowers are borne in five to eighteen spherical heads in racemes in axils, sometimes in panicles on the ends of branches, on peduncles long. Each head has 20 to 30 pale yellow to cream coloured or sometimes bright yellow flowers. Flowering occurs from July to October, mostly in August and September, and the pods are long and long, wide, flat and more or less straight or slightly curved. The pods are thinly leathery, slightly or more deeply constricted between some seeds. The seeds are oblong to more or less elliptic, long, slightly shiny black, with a club-shaped aril.
Taxonomy
The species was first formally described in 1825 by the botanist Augustin Pyramus de Candolle in his Prodromus Systematis Naturalis Regni Vegetabilis from specimens collected by Franz Sieber. The specific epithet refers to the falcate shape of the phyllodes.This species is similar in appearance to Acacia penninervis and Acacia obliquinervia. It can also form hybrids with Acacia bancroftiorum.