Plants of South Eastern New South Wales

Acacia pubescens

Flowering branch. Australian Plant Image Index, photographer Murray Fagg, Australian National Botanic Gardens, Canberra, ACT

Pods and leaves. Australian Plant Image Index, photographer Murray Fagg, Royal Botanic Gardens Mt Annan near Campbelltown

Shrub. Australian Plant Image Index, photographer S Douglas, Annangrove

Common name

Downy wattle, Hairy-stemmed wattle

Family

Fabaceae

Where found

Dry forest, woodland, and Melaleuca shrubland, often in roadside remnants. Sydney area, Blue Mountains, and north. Two sightings on the tablelands east of Mittagong.

Notes

Shrub to 5 m tall. Fleshy seed stalks/arils. Bark smooth. Branchlets cylindrical, with low ridges, hairy. Leaves alternating up the stems, compound, rachis 1.5-6.6 cm long, hairy, with 6-24 pinnae each 0.5-2.5 cm long and with 10-40 leaflets 0.15-0.5 cm long, 0.4-1 mm wide, hairless. Flower heads globular, yellow, 8-26 flowered (easiest seen in late buds), 3-6 mm in diameter, in elongated clusters of 6-49 flower heads, sometimes in branched clusters. Flowers Winter to Spring.

Vulnerable Australia. Vulnerable NSW. Provisions of the Biodiversity Conservation Act 2016 No 63 relating to the protection of protected plants generally also apply to plants that are a threatened species.

Family was Mimosaceae.

Occasionally hybridises with Acacia baileyana.

NSW Threatened Species profile:  http://www.environment.nsw.gov.au/threatenedSpeciesApp/profile.aspx?id=10023  (accessed 28 April 2021)

PlantNET description:  http://plantnet.rbgsyd.nsw.gov.au/cgi-bin/NSWfl.pl?page=nswfl&lvl=sp&name=Acacia~pubescens (accessed 28 April 2021)

World Wide Wattle line drawings, photos, and description:  http://www.worldwidewattle.com/imagegallery/image.php?p=0&l=p&id=23794&o=1