Acacia splendens


Acacia splendens is a tree or shrub of the genus Acacia and the subgenus Phyllodineae that is endemic to a small area of western Australia.

Description

The tree or shrub typically grows to a height of and has an open habit. It has thick, glabrous branchlets that are angled at the extremities and covered in a fine white powdery coating. Like most species of Acacia it has phyllodes rather than true leaves. The glabrous phyllodes are found at the end of obvious stem-projections forming narrow wings that are in length and wide and have one nerve per face and finely penninerved. It blooms in May and produces yellow flowers. The inflorescences are found on a raceme that is in length. The spherical to obloid shaped flower-heads contain 33 to 75 golden coloured flowers. Following flowering glabrous, firmly chartaceous, narrowly oblong seed pods form that are up to in length and wide and are covered in a fine white powdery coating. The shiny black seeds inside the pods have an oblong to elliptic shape with a length of with a dark red-brown club shaped aril.

Taxonomy

The species was first formally described by the botanists Bruce Maslin and Carole Elliott in 2006 as a part of the work Acacia splendens, a new rare species from near Dandaragan, Western Australia as published in the journal Nuytsia.

Distribution

It is native to a small area in the Wheatbelt region of Western Australia, all found in a single population to the north west of Dandaragan growing gravelly loam soils among laterite breakaways as a part of low Eucalyptus woodland communities.