Acacia fleckeri


Acacia fleckeri is a species of flowering plant in the family Fabaceae and is endemic to northern Queensland, Australia. It is a tree with pendulous, glabrous branchlets, narrowly elliptic to lance-shaped phyllodes with the narrower end towards the base, spherical heads of golden yellow flowers and linear, leathery pods.

Description

Acacia fleckeri is a tree that typically grows to a height of and has pendulous, glabrous branchlets with lenticels. Its phyllodes are thinly leathery, narrowly elliptic to lance-shaped with the narrower end towards the base, straight or slightly curved, long and wide. The phyllodes have three to six main veins and a gland up to above the base of the phyllode. The flowers are borne in spherical heads in axils on a glabrous peduncle long, sometimes to long in the fruiting stage. The heads are in diameter with 30 to 40 golden yellow flowers. The pods are linear, leathery and glabrous, up to long, wide and alternately raised over the seeds on each side. The seeds are broadly elliptic, about long, and dull brown with an aril.

Taxonomy

Acacia fleckeri was first formally described in 1978 by the botanist Leslie Pedley in the journal Austrobaileya from specimens collected near the Pascoe River on the Iron Range to Wenlock road in 1948.

Distribution

This species of wattle is found on the Cape York Peninsula of Queensland from around Weipa in the west to around Bowden and the Pascoe and Wenlock Rivers in the east. It grows along sandy creek or river banks or on shell mounds with species of Eucalyptus, Melaleuca, Leptospermum and other species of Acacia.