Acacia minutifolia


Acacia minutifolia, commonly known as the small-leaved flying-saucer bush, is a shrub of the genus Acacia and the subgenus Plurinerves that is endemic to arid areas of north western Australia.

Description

The shrub typically grows to a height of and has a low spreading habit with a domed or flat-topped canopy. The bark is more or less smooth but can longitudinally fissured with age and is usually a pale grey-brown colour. The scaly and leprous branchlets are angled to ward the apices and have yellow to red-brown upper portions. Like most species of Acacia it has phyllodes rather than true leaves. The thick, leathery and evergreen phyllodes appear in small bundles of three to four and have a compressed sigmoid-oblong shape with a length of and a width of and have inconspicuous nerves. It blooms from April to May or as late as August and produces simple inflorescences that have spherical flower-heads with a diameter of around with yellow or pale yellow coloured flowers.

Taxonomy

The species was first formally described by the botanist Ferdinand von Mueller in 1874 as a part of work Fragmenta Phytographiae Australiae. It was reclassified as Racosperma minutifolium by Leslie Pedley in 2003 then transferred back to genus Acacia in 2006.

Distribution

It is native to an area in the Northern Territory and the north eastern Goldfields-Esperance, eastern Pilbara and south eastern Kimberley regions of Western Australia where it is found growing in rocky soils. In the Northern Territory it is found in western areas including the Great Sandy Desert, MacDonnell Ranges, Tanami Desert and Central Ranges where it is usually situated on gravelly or rocky ranges composed of acidic or acidic rocks or upon stony laterite rises and sometimes on sandplains.