''Acacia longispinea'' is a shrub or tree of 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 ''Plurinerves'' 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 an area of 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 or tree typically grows to a height of
[ It has ]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 terete branchlets and lenticellular branchlets that are scarred by raised stem-projections from lost 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. Like most species of ''Acacia'' it has phyllodes rather than true leaves. The rigid, glabrous, pungent and evergreen phyllodes are ascending to erect and straight to shallowly incurved with a pentagonal cross section. The phyllodes are in length and wide with five strongly raised nerves.[ 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 singly and have spherical flower-heads with a diameter of containing 60 to 85 densely packed golden coloured flowers. Following flowering glabrous and chartaceous 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 form that are pendent with a linear shape but raised over each of the seeds with a length of uo to around and a width of . The pods contain dull mottled seeds with a broad-ovate to nearly circular shape and a length of .[
]
Taxonomy
The species was first formally described by the botanist Alexander Morrison in 1912 in ''The Scottish Botanical Review''. It was reclassified as ''Racosperma longispineum'' by Leslie Pedley
Leslie Pedley (19 May 1930 – 27 November 2018)IPNILeslie Pedley/ref> was an Australian botanist who specialised in the genus ''Acacia''. He is notable for bringing into use the generic name ''Racosperma'', creating a split in the genus, which r ...
in 2003 then returned to genus ''Acacia'' in 2014.[
]
Distribution
It is native to an area in 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 ...
, Wheatbelt and Goldfields-Esperance regions 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 usually situated on low rises and sandplains growing in gravelly, sandy or clay loam soilsHamelin Pool Marine Nature Reserve
The Hamelin Pool Marine Nature Reserve is a protected marine nature reserve located in the UNESCO World Heritagelisted Shark Bay in the Gascoyne region of Western Australia. The nature reserve boasts the most diverse and abundant examples ...
in the north west down to around Narembeen and Boorabbin in the south east with other smaller populations found near Albion Downs
Albion Downs Station, often referred to as Albion Downs, is a pastoral lease that operates as a sheep station. It is located about north west of Leinster and south of Wiluna in the Mid West region of Western Australia.
History
The proper ...
and Comet Vale further to the east.[
]
See also
* List of ''Acacia'' species
References
{{Taxonbar, from=Q15287692
longispinea
Acacias of Western Australia
Plants described in 1912