Acacia fragilis
Acacia fragilis is a species of flowering plant in the family Fabaceae and is endemic to the south-west of Western Australia. It is a dense, rounded or openly branched shrub with glabrous, terete branchlets, more or less terete phyllodes, spherical heads of golden yellow flowers and linear, thinly crust-like pods slightly constricted between the seeds.
Description
Acacia fragilis dense, rounded or openly branched shrub typically that typically grows to a height of and has new shoots covered with golden, silky hairs. Its branchlets are terete and glabrous. Its phyllodes are terete to subterete, straight to shallowly curved, long and wide and mostly glabrous with eight raised veins. The flowers are borne in two spherical heads in axils on peduncles long, each head in diameter with 23 to 31 golden yellow flowers. Flowering mainly occurs from August to October, and the pods are linear, thinly crust-like, long, wide, raised on alternating sides over, and slightly constricted between the seeds. The seeds are elliptic, long and dull brown, with an aril near the end.
Taxonomy
Acacia fragilis was first formally described in 1927 by the botanists Joseph Maiden and William Blakely in the Journal of the Royal Society of Western Australia. The specific epithet means 'brittle' or 'fragile', referring to the phyllodes which are brittle when dry.
Distribution and habitat
This species of wattle is native to an area near Carnamah and south-south-east to the Cunderdin-Merredin area, with a few occurrence near Holt Rock, Boondi and near Ponton Creek east of Zanthus in the Avon Wheatbelt, Coolgardie, Esperance Plains, Geraldton Sandplains, Great Victoria Desert, Jarrah Forest, Mallee and Yalgoo bioregions, mostly in the southwest of Western Australia. It grows in sand, gravelly or clayey sand or loam in heath and on sandplains with mallee eucalypts and wattles.
Conservation status
Acacia fragilis is listed as "not threatened" by the Western Australian Government Biodiversity Conservation Act 2016.