Acacia lineata

Acacia lineata commonly known as streaked wattle or narrow lined-leaved wattle, is a species of flowering plant in the family Fabaceae and is endemic to south-eastern continental Australia. It is an erect or bushy, spreading shrub with crowded, more or less linear phyllodes, spherical heads of bright golden yellow flowers, and curved to wavy or twisted, firmly papery to thinly leathery, glabrous sticky pods.

Description

Acacia lineata is a bushy, spreading shrub typically 0.5–2 m (1 ft 8 in – 6 ft 7 in) high and 1–2.5 m (3 ft 3 in – 8 ft 2 in) wide and has more or less terete, often sticky branchlets covered with soft hairs. Its phyllodes are somewhat crowded, ascending to erect, normally more or less narrowly oblong, 7–20 mm (0.28–0.79 in) long, 1–2.5 mm (0.039–0.098 in) wide with an oblique point on the end or sometimes almost hooked.

The flowers are borne in one or two spherical heads in axils on slender, normally glabrous peduncles 5–12 mm (0.20–0.47 in) long, each head with 10 to 18 bright golden yellow flowers. Flowering occurs from July to October, and the pods are curved to wavy or twisted, firmly papery to thinly leathery, up to 50 mm (2.0 in) long, 2–4 mm (0.079–0.157 in) wide, glabrous and sticky. The seeds are oblong, 3–5 mm (0.12–0.20 in) long, slightly shiny brown with an aril on the end.

Taxonomy

Acacia lineata was first formally described in 1832 by George Don in his book, A General History of Dichlamydeous Plants, from an unpublished description by Allan Cunningham.

Distribution and habitat

Streaked wattle has a scattered distribution from the Eyre Peninsula and Cowell in South Australia, through north-western Victoria and New South Wales to near the Carnarvon Range in Central Queensland. It grows in a variety of habitats such as sclerophyll forest and woodland, but mostly occurs in mallee communities.