Needlebush Wattle
Buds
Ellura
Needlebush Wattle
Flowers & Phyllodes
 
                      
Needlebush Wattle (Acacia rigens)Class: Plants (Plantae) - Land Plants (Charophyta) - Land Plants (Equisetopsida)
Order: Legumes (Fabales)
Family: Legume (Fabaceae or Leguminosae)     iNaturalist Observation
Species: Needlebush Wattle (Acacia rigens)
This Photo:     🔍Buds Opening🔎
Other name: Nealie

Thank you Alan Dandie (Alan_Dandie) & Tony and Jenny Dominelli for confirming the id of this species for us

General Species Information:
Found on Ellura (in the Murray Mallee, SA), the Riverland and elsewhere
Measured phyllode ~60mm; with veins, not sharp or spiny. ~700mm high.
This one is quite young and very well hidden. Maybe ~5 years old? Which would be interesting as it would have germinated in the severe 3 drought period.
It's very rare for us to find a new bush species on Ellura, so finding this the other day was a huge surprise. As such, we are making this our 1,400 published species on Ellura here.
We have a lot of Senna artemisioides ssp. filifolia around; and without any flowers this could easily be mistaken for that (particularly because we weren't expecting a new species). But now it's started flowering, it's clearly a different species. We suspect it's the 1st time it's flowered ... else we should have seen it before.

Copyright © 2020-2024 Brett & Marie Smith. All Rights Reserved. Photographed 18-Jul-2020
This species is classed as LC (Least Concern) in the Murray Mallee, SA, by DENR (Regional Species Status Assessments, July 2010)