Acacia flavescens


Acacia flavescens, also known as red wattle or yellow wattle, is a species of flowering plant in the family Fabaceae and is endemic to Queensland, Australia. It is a tree with rough, furrowed bark, branchlets covered with star-shaped hairs, narrowly elliptic to lance-shaped phyllodes, spherical heads of cream-coloured flowers and flat, thinly leathery pods.

Description

Acacia flavescens is a tree that typically grows to a height of and has rough, furrowed, somewhat shaggy bark. Its branchlets are covered with star-shaped hairs, and new shoots have golden hairs. The phyllodes are narrowly elliptic to lance-shaped, long and wide and more or less glabrous with three prominent main veins. The flowers are borne in spherical heads in racemes long in axils or in panicles on the ends of branchlets on peduncles long. Each head is in diameter with 30 to 60 cream-coloured flowers. The pods are flat, up to long, wide, thinly leathery and glabrous. The seeds are elliptic, long and dull black with an aril.

Taxonomy

Acacia flavescens was first formally described by George Bentham in Hooker's London Journal of Botany from an unpublished description by Allan Cunningham of specimens he collected on the Percy Islands in north-east Queensland in 1819. The specific epithet means 'pale yellow' or 'yellowish'.
A. flavescens resembles and is closely related to Acacia leptoloba.

Distribution and habitat

This species of wattle is widespread, mainly in near-coastal areas of eastern Queensland from Cape York Peninsula and south to near Brisbane, where it grows in sand in eucalypt forest and woodland, sometimes along the margins of monsoon forest and rainforest, at altitudes ranging from sea level to.

Cultivation and uses

The species is sold commercially in seed form. Seeds need to be pre-treated by scarifying or soaking in hot water prior to planting.
The tree grows well in a sunny location in a wide range of soils including poor soils. It is fast growing and can shoot from root suckers making it a possible weed problem. It has a symbiotic relationship with nitrogen fixing bacteria found on the root nodules.
The wood can be used as a fuel and the plant grown for soil stabilization or erosion control. The bark contains 10 to 26% tannin.
The bark is an astringent and can be used externally to treat wounds or internally to treat diarrhoea and dysentery.