Acacia tetanophylla


Acacia tetanophylla is a shrub of the genus Acacia and the subgenus Plurinerves that is endemic to an area of south western Australia.

Description

The pungent shrub typically grows to a height of with hairy to glabrous branchlets. Like most species of Acacia it has phyllodes rather than true leaves. The ascending to erect, rigid and grey-green phyllodes are usually straight and threadlike with a hexagonal cross-section when young. The glabrous phyllodes have a length of and a width of with a total of seven visible nerves. It blooms from August to October and produces yellow flowers. The simple inflorescences are composed of spherical flower-heads with a diameter of containing 13 to 18 usually golden coloured flowers. The firmly papery and glabrous seed pods that form after flowering usually have a linear to narrowly oblong shape with a length up to and a width of. the pods contain shiny dark brown to black coloured seeds with an oblong-elliptic to ovate shape thar are in length.

Taxonomy

The species was first formally described by the botanist Bruce Maslin in 1977 as a part of the work Studies in the genus Acacia - Miscellany as published in the journal Nuytsia. It was reclassified by Leslie Pedley in 2003 as Racosperma tetanophyllum then transferred back to genus Acacia in 2006.

Distribution

It is native to an area in the Great Southern, Goldfields-Esperance and Wheatbelt regions of Western Australia where it is commonly situated on plains along creeks and rivers growing in rock or sandy loams or sandy-clay or sandy soils often over or around granite. The range extends from just south of the Stirling Range in the north-west out to around Ravensthorpe in the south east with outliers near Nyabing and Lake King both of which are further north.