''Acacia burrowsiana'', also known as Burrows’ snakewood or gizzard wattle, is a tree belonging to the genus ''

Acacia ''Acacia'', commonly known as the wattles or acacias, is a large genus of shrubs and trees in the subfamily Mimosoideae of the pea family Fabaceae. Initially, it comprised a group of plant species native to Africa and Australasia. The genus na ...

'' and the subgenus ''Juliflorae'' that is

endemic Endemism is the state of a species being found in a single defined geographic location, such as an island, state, nation, country or other defined zone; organisms that are indigenous to a place are not endemic to it if they are also found elsew ...

to western

Australia Australia, officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a Sovereign state, sovereign country comprising the mainland of the Australia (continent), Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous List of islands of Australia, sma ...

Description

The tree typically grows to a height of and has fibrous to fissured grey coloured bark that becomes smooth on upper branches. It often has a gnarled habit with the trunk and main branches looking contorted and with a horizontally spreading crown. Like most ''Acacias'' it has

phyllode Phyllodes are modified petioles or leaf stems, which are leaf-like in appearance and function. In some plants, these become flattened and widened, while the leaf itself becomes reduced or vanishes altogether. Thus the phyllode comes to serve the ...

s rather than true leaves. The pale green and erect phyllodes have a narrowly linear oblanceolate or linear elliptic shape and can be straight to shallowly incurved. They are in length and wide. The phyllodes tend to be sub-rigid, coarsely pungent,

glabrous Glabrousness (from the Latin ''glaber'' meaning "bald", "hairless", "shaved", "smooth") is the technical term for a lack of hair, down, setae, trichomes or other such covering. A glabrous surface may be a natural characteristic of all or part of ...

and have parallel nerves. It blooms between October and November and produces simple

inflorescence An inflorescence is a group or cluster of flowers arranged on a stem that is composed of a main branch or a complicated arrangement of branches. Morphologically, it is the modified part of the shoot of seed plants where flowers are formed o ...

s composed of loosely packed flower-spikes that are in length. The sub-woody

seed pod This page provides a glossary of plant morphology. Botanists and other biologists who study plant morphology use a number of different terms to classify and identify plant organs and parts that can be observed using no more than a handheld magnify ...

s that form later resemble a string of beads and are curved to irregularly twisted with a length of and a width of . The brown to black coloured seeds within have an elliptic to widely elliptic shape.

Distribution

It has a discontinuous distribution throughout an area of the

Mid West The Midwestern United States, also referred to as the Midwest or the American Midwest, is one of four Census Bureau Region, census regions of the United States Census Bureau (also known as "Region 2"). It occupies the northern central part of ...

region of

Western Australia Western Australia (commonly abbreviated as WA) is a state of Australia occupying the western percent of the land area of Australia excluding external territories. It is bounded by the Indian Ocean to the north and west, the Southern Ocean to th ...

roughly centred around Wiluna where it is found on flats along creeks and river beds, breakaways and crests of low rises growing in loamy soils with ironstone gravel and stones or calcrete soils with laterite and quartz. Most of the population is found in the Murchison region around

Mount Magnet Mount is often used as part of the name of specific mountains, e.g. Mount Everest. Mount or Mounts may also refer to: Places * Mount, Cornwall, a village in Warleggan parish, England * Mount, Perranzabuloe, a hamlet in Perranzabuloe parish, C ...

, near

Sandstone Sandstone is a clastic sedimentary rock composed mainly of sand-sized (0.0625 to 2 mm) silicate grains. Sandstones comprise about 20–25% of all sedimentary rocks. Most sandstone is composed of quartz or feldspar (both silicates) ...

and Cue.

References

{{Taxonbar, from=Q17438733 burrowsiana Acacias of Western Australia Plants described in 2007 Taxa named by Bruce Maslin

Description

Distribution

See also

References