Acacia teretifolia


Acacia teretifolia is a shrub of the genus Acacia and the subgenus Phyllodineae. It is native to an area in the Wheatbelt, South West and Peel regions of Western Australia.

Description

The pungent sub-shrub is typically in height with an open and erect habit and has multiple glabrous stems with finely-ribbed flexuose branchlets that have spiny slender stipules that are long. It has green to grey green, erect, cylindrical to occasionally flat phyllodes that are in length and wide with four to five obscure nerves. It blooms between May and July forming simple inflorescences form singly or in pairs and have spherical flower-heads that contain 23 to 30 bright light golden coloured flowers. The sub-woody, red-brown, cylindrical and shallowly curved seed pods that form later are narrowed at both ends and are up to in length and wide. The dull yellow-brown seeds inside have a narrowly oblong shape and are arranged longitudinally inside the pod.

Taxonomy

The species was first formally described by the botanist George Bentham in 1842 as a part of the work Notes on Mimoseae, with a synopsis of species. as published in William Jackson Hooker's London Journal of Botany. The only synonym is Racosperma teretifolium as described by Leslie Pedley in 2003 before it was returned to genus Acacia in 2006. The type specimen was collected by James Drummond from around the Swan River.

Distribution

It has a discontinuous distribution from around Lesueur National Park in the north down to around Donnybrook in the south. It is usually found growing in sandy to sandy-clay soils over granite or laterite.