Acacia flavipila
Acacia flavipila is a species of flowering plant in the family Fabaceae and is endemic to the south-west of Western Australia. It is a spreading shrub with hairy branchlets, elliptic to oblong or lance-shaped phyllodes with stipules at the base, spherical heads of golden yellow flowers and linear, hairy, curved or coiled pods.
Description
Acacia flavipila is a spreading shrub that typically grows to a height of and has branchlets that are covered in soft, golden or white hairs, sometimes pressed against the surface. Its phyllodes are elliptic to oblong or lance-shaped with the narrower end towards the base, long and wide with two or three main veins and a gland above the base of the phyllode. There are persistent stipules about 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 28 to 35 golden yellow flowers. Flowering occurs from May to September and the pods are linear, more or less coiled or curved up to long and wide.Taxonomy
In 1943, Charles Gardner described Acacia aurea in the Journal of the Royal Society of Western Australia but that name was illegitimate because it had already been used for a different taxon, named by Francisco Noronha in 1790.Acacia flavipila was first formally described in 1966 by Alex George in the Journal of the Royal Society of Western Australia. The specific epithet means 'yellow hair', referring to the hairs on the peduncles, pedicels and young phyllodes.
In 1990, Richard Cowan and Bruce Maslin described two varieties of A. flavipila and the names are accepted by the Australian Plant Census:Acacia flavipila A.S.George var. flavipila has elliptic to oblong or lance-shaped phyllodes with the narrower end towards the base and with woolly hairs, two to three times longer than wide.Acacia flavipila var. ovalisR.S.Cowan and Maslin has widely elliptic to elliptic phyllodes, glabrous or sparsely hairy, mostly less than twice as long as wide.