Family

Fabaceae

Distribution

Confined to a few populations on the Darling Downs in SE Qld, near Tara and Inglewood.

Description

Sprawling shrub to 2 m high. Branchlets sparsely to moderately puberulous with short, weak, ± wide-spreading hairs, rarely glabrous. Phyllodes patent to inclined or sometimes erect, shallowly to moderately or rarely strongly incurved, sometimes most or all shallowly sigmoid, occasionally a few straight, flat, 20–40 (–45) mm long, 1–2.5 mm wide, excentrically mucronate with mucro rarely lateral, glabrous or rarely subglabrous, 1-nerved or sometimes imperfectly 2- or 3-nerved; midrib slightly raised; gland minute, basal. Inflorescences simple; peduncles 3–7 mm long, glabrous or sparsely hairy, ebracteate at base; heads globular, 25–30-flowered, golden. Flowers 5-merous; sepals ½–3/4-united, acute or obtuse. Pods linear, to 6 cm long, c. 4 mm wide, glabrous. Seeds longitudinal, 4.5–5 mm long; aril cupular.

Habitat

Grows on sandy soils in low open woodland.

Specimens

Qld: 13.8 km by road N of Tara towards Chinchilla, R.Coveny 6800 & P.Hind (BRI, MEL, NSW); ‘Marron Glen’, near Coolmunda Dam, Inglewood, F.McKenzie MG4 (BRI).

Notes

Acacia lauta is a member of the ‘A. johnsonii group’. It was treated by B.R.Maslin, Fl. Australia 11A: 458 (2001), as conspecific with A. johnsonii and although accepted here its taxonomic status and relationship to A. johnsonii warrants further study.

FOA Reference

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

Author

B.R.Maslin