''Acacia incongesta'', also known as Peak Charles wattle,
is a shrub 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 a small area in south 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 shrub is dense and rounded typically growing to a height of
[ and has glabrous branchlets. Like most species of ''Acacia'' 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 evergreen, ascending to erect phyllodes have a narrowly elliptic shape and can be incurved. They have a length of and a width of and are semi-rigid and sharply to coarsely pungent and have three distant, raised nerves.[ It blooms from March to June producing cream flowers.][ The 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 occur in pairs in the axil
A leaf ( : leaves) is any of the principal appendages of a vascular plant stem, usually borne laterally aboveground and specialized for photosynthesis. Leaves are collectively called foliage, as in "autumn foliage", while the leaves, st ...
s forming cylindrical flower-spikes that have a length of and a diameter of and are subdensely packed with cream coloured flowers. The pendant, thinly-coriaceous and glabrous 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 after flowering have a linear shape but are
raised over and constricted between the seeds. The pods have a length of up to and a width of with the seeds arranged longitudinally inside. The slightly glossy black seeds have a broadly elliptic shape with a length of and an apical aril
An aril (pronounced ), also called an arillus, is a specialized outgrowth from a seed that partly or completely covers the seed. An arillode or false aril is sometimes distinguished: whereas an aril grows from the attachment point of the see ...
.[
]
Distribution
It is native to a small area near Peak Charles in Peak Charles National Park in the Goldfields-Esperance 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 ...
where it is found situated on granite
Granite () is a coarse-grained (phaneritic) intrusive igneous rock composed mostly of quartz, alkali feldspar, and plagioclase. It forms from magma with a high content of silica and alkali metal oxides that slowly cools and solidifies undergro ...
mountain slopes and clay flats growing in sandy soils.Norseman
The Norsemen (or Norse people) were a North Germanic ethnolinguistic group of the Early Middle Ages, during which they spoke the Old Norse language. The language belongs to the North Germanic branch of the Indo-European languages and is the pre ...
and the shrub is usually part of low heathland communities.[
]
See also
* List of ''Acacia'' species
References
{{Taxonbar, from=Q15287395
incongesta
Acacias of Western Australia
Plants described in 1995
Taxa named by Bruce Maslin