Acacia baileyana
Common names
Cootamundra wattle
Biostatus
Exotic
Category
Vascular
Structural class
Trees & Shrubs - Dicotyledons
Flower colours
Yellow
Detailed description
Small to fairly large tree with bipinnate glaucous leaves. The cultivated variety ”purpurea” is also widely grown, this has purple-tinged leaves but is not known to be naturalised. Flowers consist of numerous globbose mid-yellow heads in racemes exceeding the leaves. The seed pod is more or less straight, up to 100 x 20 mm.
Similar taxa
Easily distinguished from other naturalised wattles by the glaucous leaves with small, unequal pinnae.
Habitat
Waste places and scrubland.
Conservation status
Not applicable
Detailed taxonomy
Family
Fabaceae
Ecology
Flowering
June, July, August.
Year naturalised
1981
Origin
N.S.W (Australia)
Reason for introduction
Forestry
Tolerances
Can tolerate a wide variety of conditions, does particularly well in dry areas.
Life cycle and dispersal
Reproduces from seed. Huge numbers of flowers are produced on plants as young as 2 years old. This results in high seed production. Germination is enhanced by fire or mechanical disturbance. Widely spread as a cultivated plant. Seed dispersed a short distance form parent plant by wind and gravity.
Other information
Etymology
acacia: Derived from Greek ‘akazo’ to sharpen, meaning point; spine or thorn.
Environmental Weed (2024)
This plant is named in a list of 386 environmental weeds in New Zealand 2024 prepared by DOC. 759 candidate species were considered for inclusion on this new comprehensive list of environmental weeds in New Zealand. The species considered were drawn from published lists of weed species, lists of plants that must be reported or managed by law if observed, existing national and regional programmes and agreements for pest management, and species already managed by the Department of Conservation (DOC). Candidate species were then assessed to see if they were fully naturalised and whether they have more than minor impacts in natural ecosystems. Read the full report here.
NVS code
The National Vegetation Survey (NVS) Databank is a physical archive and electronic databank containing records of over 94,000 vegetation survey plots - including data from over 19,000 permanent plots. NVS maintains a standard set of species code abbreviations that correspond to standard scientific plant names from the Ngä Tipu o Aotearoa - New Zealand Plants database.
ACABAI