''Acacia muelleriana'' is a species of ''
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 ...
'' native to eastern
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 and has angled to terete, ridged and
glabrous branchlets that have smooth grey bark. The filiform and glabrous leaves have a
rachis that is and has one or two, or sometimes three pairs of
pinnae that are made up of four to ten pairs of widely spaced pinnules with a linear shape and a length of and a width of . The plant blooms between August and December 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 that occur in terminal panicles with spherical flower-heads with a diameter of containing 5 to 14 cream-coloured flowers. The thinly leathery 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 are more or less flat and are straight to curved and irregularly constricted between the seeds. The pods have a length of and a width of containing longitudinally arranged seeds.
[
]
Etymology & naming
Joseph Maiden
Joseph Henry Maiden (25 April 1859 – 16 November 1925) was a botanist who made a major contribution to knowledge of the Australian flora, especially the genus ''Eucalyptus''. This botanist is denoted by the author abbreviation when citing ...
and Richard Baker first described the species in 1893 from a specimen found at the "Foot of ranges forming the southern watershed of the western branches of the Hunter River, New South Wales", and gave it the specific epithet, ''muelleriana'', to honour Ferdinand von Mueller
Baron Sir Ferdinand Jacob Heinrich von Mueller, (german: Müller; 30 June 1825 – 10 October 1896) was a German-Australian physician, geographer, and most notably, a botanist. He was appointed government botanist for the then colony of Vict ...
.[
]
Distribution
It 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 central parts of New South Wales
)
, nickname =
, image_map = New South Wales in Australia.svg
, map_caption = Location of New South Wales in AustraliaCoordinates:
, subdivision_type = Country
, subdivision_name = Australia
, established_title = Before federation
, es ...
from around the Goonoo Forest and the Mudgee district in the south. It is found in a variety of habitat usually around 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) ...
as a part of dry sclerophyll
Sclerophyll is a type of vegetation that is adapted to long periods of dryness and heat. The plants feature hard leaf, leaves, short Internode (botany), internodes (the distance between leaves along the stem) and leaf orientation which is paral ...
forest communities.[
]
See also
* List of ''Acacia'' species
References
External links
Images from Flickr for Acacia muelleriana
Acacia muelleriana occurrence data
from Australasian Virtual Herbarium
The ''Australasian Virtual Herbarium'' (AVH) is an online resource that allows access to plant specimen data held by various Australian and New Zealand herbaria. It is part of the Atlas of Living Australia (ALA), and was formed by the amalgamat ...
{{Taxonbar, from=Q9567137
muelleriana
Fabales of Australia
Flora of New South Wales
Flora of Queensland
Taxa named by Joseph Maiden
Plants described in 1893
Taxa named by Richard Thomas Baker