Common Name

Bartle’s Wattle

Family

Fabaceae

Distribution

Restricted to the Esperance area in south-western W.A. where it occurs in a few scattered localities from between Salmon Gums and Scaddan, extending E for c. 50 km to the vicinity of Kau Rock, Mt Ney, Mt Burdett and Wittenoom.

Description

Erect shrub or tree 1.5–7 (–10) m high, not fragrant. Branchlets resin-ribbed, hoary around phyllode bases. Phyllodes normally narrowly oblong-elliptic to narrowly oblong-oblanceolate, straight to shallowly recurved, sometimes shallowly incurved, (2–) 2.5–6.5 (–7.5) cm long, (2–) 3–6 (–10) mm wide, acute or sometimes obtuse, excentrically mucronate to sub-uncinate or uncinate, mid- to dark-green, glabrous; with (2–) 3–8 (–9) distant, prominent nerves, anastomoses rare. Inflorescences (1–) 2–4 (–6)-headed racemes; raceme axes (1–) 2–8 mm long; peduncles (2–) 3–8 mm long, appressed-puberulous; heads globular or slightly obloid, 4–5 mm diam. (dry), densely c. 20-flowered, golden; buds resinous. Flowers 5-merous; sepals free, 2/3–3/4 length of petals, narrowly oblong, narrowed towards base. Pods linear, straight to shallowly curved, 2–6.5 cm long, 2.5–3.5 mm wide, thinly coriaceous, glabrous. Seeds longitudinal, oblong, 3.5–4.5 mm long, ±shiny, dark brown to ±black, aril yellow-brown or brown (dry).

Phenology

Flowers June–Oct.

Habitat

Grows in sandy loam or clay-loam in or near waterlogged depressions, often with Flat-topped Yate (Eucalyptus occidentalis).

Specimens

W.A.: 1.6 km E of Kau Rock, T.E.H.Aplin 4058 (CANB, K, MEL, PERTH); Scaddan, I.B.Armitage 534 (PERTH); Mt Ney Rd, 3 km S of Burdett Rd (NE of Esperance), W.O’Sullivan WOS 1894 (PERTH).

Notes

A relatively long-lived species that seemingly regenerates from seed and is apparently resistant to locust attack; its heartwood is dark-coloured, hard and dense, see B.R.Maslin & M.W.McDonald, AcaciaSearch: Evaluation of Acacia as a woody crop option for southern Australia, RIRDC Publication No. 03/017: 166–168 (2004), for further discussion.

Related to the more westerly distributed A. redolens which differs most obviously in its normally prostrate growth form and generally broader phyllodes that are distinctively vanilla-scented (not so in A. bartlei), grey-green to glaucous and rounded to obtuse at their apices that are never ±uncinate.

This species was included by R.S.Cowan & B.R.Maslin, Fl. Australia 11B: 44 (2001), within their circumscription of A. redolens, but it was noted there as a variant characterized by narrow, ±uncinate phyllodes and arborescent stature, and occurring in the Scaddan–Salmon Gums–Kau Rock area.

The phyllodes are somewhat variable in width. They are normally 3–6 mm wide, but a variant with consistently narrow phyllodes (2 mm wide) occurs in the vicinity of Circle Valley, S of Salmon Gums (e.g. D.Collins s.n., PERTH), and some specimens possess a few phyllodes which are atypically wide (to 10 mm) (e.g. B.R.Maslin 8217, PERTH).

FOA Reference

Flora of Australia Project

Author

B.R.Maslin, J.Reid