Brigalow

Acacia harpophylla

Description:

  • Habitat: Brigalow is typically found in open woodlands, often forming extensive stands known as brigalow scrubs. It is adapted to a variety of soils, including clay and alluvial soils.

  • Growth Form: It is a medium to large-sized tree, reaching heights of up to 25 meters. The trunk is usually straight, and the crown is relatively dense.

  • Leaves: The leaves are bipinnate, feathery, and composed of numerous small leaflets. The arrangement is fern-like and provides the tree with a soft appearance.

  • Flowers: The flowers are typically pale yellow or cream, occurring in cylindrical clusters known as spikes. Like many Acacia species, the flowers are often small and inconspicuous.

  • Seed Pods: The tree produces elongated seed pods, which are curved and constricted between seeds. The pods can be up to 15 cm long.

Identification Features:

  1. Bipinnate Leaves: The feathery, bipinnate leaves are a distinctive feature of Acacia harpophylla.

  2. Yellowish Flowers: The small, pale yellow or cream-colored flowers are arranged in spikes.

  3. Curved Seed Pods: The seed pods are elongated, curved, and constricted between seeds.

Erect or spreading tree usually 5–20 m high; suckers extensively, particularly following disturbance; bark furrowed, flaky to fibrous, grey or brown; branchlets angled at extremities, minutely appressed-hairy to glabrous.

Phyllodes narrowly elliptic, subfalcate or falcate, 10–20 cm long, 7–20 mm wide (rarely to 25 mm wide), leathery, glabrous to finely hairy, silvery grey, longitudinal veins numerous, closely spaced, 3–7 more prominent, apex acute or subacute; 1 gland at base; pulvinus 2–6 mm long.

Inflorescences 3–8 on an axillary axis 2–10 mm long; peduncles 10–20 mm long, minutely appressed-hairy; heads globose, 15–30-flowered, 4–8 mm diam., bright yellow to ± white.

Pods straight to slightly curved, raised over seeds and slightly or irregularly more deeply constricted between them, 3–11 cm long, 7–9 mm wide, firmly papery to thinly leathery, longitudinally veined, sparsely hairy to glabrous; seeds longitudinal; funicle filiform.