Acacia gillii
Acacia gillii, commonly known as Gill's wattle, is a species of flowering plant in the family Fabaceae and is endemic to South Australia. It is a straggly, open shrub with pendulous branches, glabrous, dark reddish brown branchlets, narrowly lance-shaped or linear phyllodes, spherical heads of golden yellow flowers and linear, leathery to crusty, glabrous pods.
Description
Acacia gillii is a straggly, open shrub that typically grows to a height of and has a pendulous branches and winding branchlets that are flat or angled at the ends, dark reddish brown and glabrous. The phyllodes are lance-shaped with the narrower end towards the base or linear, long, wide, leathery and glabrous with the midrib and edges prominent. There is a gland above the pulvinus. The flowers are borne in spherical heads in racemes long on peduncles long, each headwith 43 to 72 densely arranged golden yellow flowers. Flowering occurs at irregular periods throughout the year, and the pods are linear, up to long, wide, glabrous and leathery to crusty. The seeds are elliptic, long and dull black with a club-shaped aril.
Taxonomy
Acacia gillii was first formally described in 1927 by the botanists Joseph Maiden and William Blakely in the Journal and Proceedings of the Royal Society of New South Wales. The specific epithet honours Walter Gill who collected the type specimen and Thomas Gill, a public servant.
Distribution and habitat
Gill's wattle is found in a small area of South Australia in southern parts of the Eyre Peninsula from near Port Lincoln to Ungarra, where it grows in clay or loam in open scrub, often with Eucalyptus diversifolia and Eucalyptus phenax.