Common Name

Wiry Wattle

Family

Fabaceae

Distribution

Widely distributed from near Mogumber S to Albany, south-western W.A.

Description

Spindly open shrub to 3 m high, glabrous, occasionally semi-weeping. Branchlets angled, often flattened at apices, sometimes narrowly winged, green, with yellowish ribs. Phyllodes often few, distant and resembling the branchlets, frequently filiform, slender, normally ±pentagonal in section, rarely flat, 6–24 cm long, 0.8–1.8 mm wide, with somewhat indurate mucro, with 5 prominent yellowish nerves (the adaxial 2 forming a broad upper margin). Inflorescences comprising racemes resembling the branchlets, sometimes simple; peduncles 3–8 mm long; heads globular, 12–24-flowered, light golden. Flowers 5-merous; sepals united to near apex; petals 1-nerved. Pods linear, submoniliform, straight to shallowly curved, to 9 cm long, 3–4 mm wide, firmly chartaceous to thinly coriaceous. Seeds longitudinal, oblong to oblong-elliptic, 4–5 mm long, shiny, dark brown; aril apical.

Habitat

Widely distributed from near Mogumber S to Albany, south-western W.A.; naturalized in a few places in Vic.

Specimens

W.A.: 3 km S of Porongurup Ra., R.H.Kuchel 1955 (PERTH); c. 3.5 km below Mundaring Weir, Helena R. Valley, B.R.Maslin 671A (CANB, PERTH); Darling Ra., L.Pritzel 532 (B, BM, E, G, L, LY, M, NY, P, PR, Z). Vic.: Western Grampians, Wartook State Forest, G.W.Carr 0908-267 (MEL).

Notes

Included in sect. Pulchelloidea by J.Vassal, Bull. Soc. Hist. Nat. Toulouse 108: 1–127 (1972); this section combined both phyllodinous and bipinnate-leaved species.

Besides the names given in synonymy above, a number of other names, presumably unpublished, appear on specimens of A. extensa at various European herbaria, viz. A. balsamea (WU), A. balsamifera (FI), A. caetinsa (MPU) and A. howardii (L).

FOA Reference

Data derived from Flora of Australia Volumes 11A (2001), 11B (2001) and 12 (1998), products of ABRS, ©Commonwealth of Australia

Author

Minor edits by B.R.Maslin

B.R.Maslin