Common Name

McNutt’s Wattle

Family

Fabaceae

Distribution

Restricted to an area from Deepwater N for c. 70 km to the Bald Rock Natl Park, north-eastern N.S.W.

Description

Bushy shrub 1.5–3 m high. Branchlets finely ribbed, dark coloured, glabrous. Phyllodes narrowly linear, straight to shallowly incurved, (6–) 8–15 cm long, 2–3 (–4) mm wide, acuminate, with delicate and mostly incurved tips, thin, glabrous; midrib not prominent; lateral nerves few, obscure; glands not exserted, rarely 2, with the lowermost 5–25 mm above pulvinus. Inflorescences racemose; raceme axes 1–5 cm long, appressed-puberulous; heads globular, 10–15-flowered, golden; peduncles (2–) 3–5 mm long, appressed-puberulous. Flowers 5‑merous; sepals united; petals 1-nerved. Pods narrowly oblong to broadly linear, raised over seeds along the midline, to 10 cm long, 10–14 mm wide, firmly chartaceous, dark brown, faintly pruinose, glabrous. Seeds longitudinal, ±oblong, 5–7 mm long, slightly shiny, black; funicle short; aril clavate.

Habitat

Grows on sides of valleys and along rivers in soil derived from acid granite.

Specimens

N.S.W.: Bismuth near Torrington, Jan. 1916, J.L.Boorman s.n. (PERTH); Boonoo Boonoo Falls, 13.8 km NNE of Boonoo Boonoo, K.Thirtell & R.Coveny 3889 (AD n.v., CANB n.v., K n.v., L n.v., NA n.v., NE n.v., NSW, PERTH, US n.v., Z).

Notes

Superficially similar to A. acrionastes, A. adunca, A. betchei, A. floydii, A. forsythii and A. linearifolia in having long, narrowly linear phyllodes and racemose inflorescences. However, A. macnuttiana is distinguished by a combination of its appressed-puberulous raceme axes and peduncles, and acuminate phyllodes with non-exserted glands.

The herb. NSW specimen assumed to be the ‘D9’ syntype (see protologue) has unusually short phyllodes (c. 6 cm long).

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