Acacia fodinalis
Acacia fodinalis is a species of flowering plant in the family Fabaceae and is endemic to central eastern Queensland, Australia. It is a tree with glabrous, reddish branchlets, mostly glabrous, sickle-shaped phyllodes, spikes of golden yellow flowers and linear pods prominently raised over the seeds.
Description
Acacia fodinalis is a tree that typically grows to a height of and has glabrous, reddish branchlets that are resinous when young. Its phyllodes are mostly shallowly sickle-shaped, tapered equally at both ends, long and wide and glabrous with crowded, parallel veins with two or three main veins, yellow or brownish pulvinus and a prominent gland up to above the pulvinus. The flowers are borne in rather open, golden yellow spikes long on a peduncle mostly long. Flowering occurs from June to September, and the pods are linear, up to long and wide, dark brown, glabrous, prominently raised over the seeds and slightly constricted between them. The seeds are light brown, about long with a yellow, cup-shaped aril.
Taxonomy
Acacia fodinalis was first formally described in 1999 by Leslie Pedley in the journal Austrobaileya from specimens collected near the Norwich Park coal mine in 1983. The specific epithet means 'pertaining to or belonging to a pit or mine', "alluding to the large collieries in the geographic range of the species".
This species of wattle is endemic to central eastern Queensland where it is found in the upper portion on the Isaac River watershed and adjacent parts of the Belyando River catchment where it usually grows on floodplains and riverbanks growing in sandy soils in Eucalyptus woodland, usually with Eucalyptus crebra.
Acacia fodinalis is listed as of "least concern" under the Queensland Government Nature Conservation Act 1992.