Acacia Oswaldii

Price:

$110.00 (including GST)

Common Name:

UMBRELLA WATTLE

PLEASE NOTE: Orders are by full tray only. Each tray contains 40 plants. When ordering, please choose how many trays you would like.

WHAT IT LOOKS LIKE:

1. Spreading rounded shrub growing 1–4 m high and wide

2. Branchlets yellow or reddish, minutely hairy

3. ‘Leaves’ grey-green, 1.5–5 cm long, 3–7 mm wide, radiating around branchlets, variable in shape

4. Bright golden ball flowers in heavy clusters at branch ends; flower stalks stout, with minute golden hairs; flowering April to October

5. Seed pods straight or curved, 5–10 cm long, 4–9 mm wide, dark brown at maturity, may have a whitish bloom
Erect or spreading tree or shrub 2–6 m high; bark finely fissured, dark grey; branchlets angled at extremities, soon terete, hairy.
Phyllodes linear, narrowly elliptic or narrowly elliptic-oblong, straight to curved, mostly 3–8 cm long (range 2–12 cm long), 2–10 mm wide, 10–15 prominent but fine longitudinal veins, glabrescent with age, apex acute to obtuse with a mucro; 1 gland at base; pulvinus < 2 mm long.
Inflorescences simple, 1 or 2 in axil of phyllodes; peduncles 0–1 mm long, hairy; heads globose, 5–16-flowered, 5–8 mm diam., pale yellow.
Pods strongly curved or twisted or coiled 1–2 times, ± flat except raised over seeds, slightly or variably more deeply constricted between seeds, 4–25 cm long, 5–12 mm wide, leathery to woody, minutely appressed-hairy; seeds longitudinal; funicle expanded towards seed.
Flowering golden-yellow or pale-yellow between October and December.

WHERE IT GROWS & WHY:

Mainly growing in calcareous sands or loam.
Widespread in various habitats and vegetation communities, including open eucalypt forest or among other acacias.
Heavy to moderately-drained soil. Partial or full sun. Tolerates drought and frost.

MANAGEMENT/SIGNIFICANCE:

Useful low-level cover in windbreaks.
Improves soil fertility by "fixing" nitrogen.
Timber is heavy, close-grained, durable and disagreeably-scented. Not commonly used, although reputedly suitable for cabinet work.
Prickly dense foliage good cover for birds.
Subsistence fodder. Pods eaten by sheep.

SIMILAR PLANTS:

Acacia Pendula - Weeping Myall - has leathery 'leaves', densely hairy when young

Image Source: Flower - Fagg, M. via Australian National Botanic Gardens (ANBG)

Image Source: Plant - Fagg, M. via Australian National Botanic Gardens (ANBG)

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