Acacia oswaldii, commonly known as boree,[3]umbrella wattle, umbrella bush, whyacka, middia, miljee, nelia and curly yarran,[4] is a shrub or tree of the genus Acacia and the subgenus Plurinerves.
Description
The shrub or tree typically grows to a height of 1 to 6 metres (3 to 20ft)[5] and can be found to 8m (26ft). It has terete and glabrous branchlets with many red, resinous micro-hairs. Phyllodes are spreading to erect with leaves that are linear, narrowly elliptic or narrowly oblong-elliptic shape that is straight to recurved, terete to flat, 2.5 to 10.5 centimetres (1 to 4in) in length and 3 to 15 millimetres (0.12 to 0.59in) wide.[4] Leaves are hairy when young, becoming hairless, edges smooth, with a straight often sharp point.[6]
It blooms from October to December and produces yellow flowers.[5] The simple inflorescences forms singly or in pairs in the axil of the phyllodes supported on hairy peduncles that are 0 to 1 millimetre (0.00 to 0.04in) long. The flowers are heads globose holding 5 to 16-flowers that are 5 to 8mm (0.2 to 0.3in) in diameter. Seed pods form later that are curved or coiled and mostly flat except where raised over seeds. The leathery to woody pods are 4 to 25cm (1.6 to 9.8in) long and 5 to 12mm (0.2 to 0.5in) wide.[7] Seeds can be collected from March to May and sown from November to February and will germinated in 3 to 10 weeks. A. oswaldii can also be grown from cuttings.[8]
The distribution is wide but scattered throughout arid, semi-arid and subtropical areas in all states on the mainland, occurring mainly in calcareous sands or loamy soils.[4]
Classification
The species was initially described by the botanist Ferdinand von Mueller in 1863 in the journal Fragmenta Phytographiae Australiae.[3] Several synonyms are known including Racosperma oswaldii,[7]Acacia sessiliceps, Acacia amaliae var. amaliae, Acacia osswaldi, Acacia amaliae, Acacia oswaldi var. abbreviata and Acacia amaliae var. orthophylla.[3]
The name honours Ferdinand Oswald, who was involved with the collection of the type specimen.[7] The type specimen was collected by von Mueller in 1851 near Blanchetown on the Murray River.[4]
This page is based on this Wikipedia article Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply. Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.
