Acacia implexa

Acacia implexa, commonly known as lightwood[1] or hickory wattle,[2][3] is a fast-growing Australian tree, the timber of which is used for furniture making.[1] The wood is prized for its finish and strength. The foliage was used to make pulp and dye cloth.[4]

Lightwood
Acacia implexa
Scientific classification
Kingdom: Plantae
Clade: Tracheophytes
Clade: Angiosperms
Clade: Eudicots
Clade: Rosids
Order: Fabales
Family: Fabaceae
Clade: Mimosoideae
Genus: Acacia
Species:
A. implexa
Binomial name
Acacia implexa
Occurrence data from AVH
Lightwood bark (6281541256)
Acacia implexa flowers 1

Description

The long lived perennial[5] small to medium-sized tree with an upright habit and an open crown[3] that typically grows to a height of 5 to 15 m (16 to 49 ft)[1] and a width of 4 to 10 m (13 to 33 ft).[4] The tree can be have a single or multiple stems with rough greyish bark rough. The branchlets commonly lightly covered in waxy bloom but are not prominently ribbed.[5] It has light green slender sickle shaped phyllodes that have a length of up to 20 cm (7.9 in)[2] and a width of 6 to 25 mm (0.24 to 0.98 in) and have three to seven prominent nerves and many other fainter ones that are parallel and branching. Bipinnate leaves may persist on some plants.[5] Young foliage have a purple colour in certain conditions.[4] It blooms in summer and produces spherical cream coloured flowers with a strong perfume.[1][2] The flowerheads have a diameter of 5 to 6 mm (0.20 to 0.24 in) and contain 30 to 52 cream to pale yellow flowers. After flowering thick woody seed pods with a linear and twisted to coiled shape form with a length of 25 cm (9.8 in) and a width of 4 to 7 mm (0.16 to 0.28 in) 25 cm long, 4–7 mm wide, woody or thick.[5]

Dust from the pods can irritate the eyes and nose.[4] It has wood similar to and is often mistaken with Acacia melanoxylon.[3][4]

Taxonomy

The species was first formally described by the botanist George Bentham in 1842 as part of the work Notes on Mimoseae, with a synopsis of species as published in the London Journal of Botany. It was reclassified as Racosperma implexum by Leslie Pedley in 1987 and transferred back into its original genus in 2006. The only other synonym is Acacia implexa var. implexa.[6]

Distribution

It is widespread in eastern Australia from central coastal Queensland to southern Victoria, with outlying populations on the Atherton Tableland in northern Queensland and Tasmania's King Island.[1] The tree is commonly found on fertile plains and in hilly country it is usually part of open forest communities and grows in shallow drier sandy and clay soils.[5]

Aboriginal uses

The Ngunnawal people of the ACT used the bark to make rope, string, medicine and for fish poison, the timber for tools, and the seeds to make flour.[7]

Cultivation

The species is very hardy and suitable for soil stabilization and bank planting, as a result of the plants suckering habit which can be accelerated if the roots are damaged. It handles full sun well and is drought[3] and frost tolerant to a temperature of −7 °C (19 °F). Very prone to leaf gall.[2]

gollark: You have a reasonable point that you can be nice to people inside a conversation but (possibly inadvertently) non-nice to those outside it. I think niceness within conversations is more important, as people outside them can more easily choose not to participate in them, but this doesn't work excellently. Banning discussion of anything some people do not like reading is *a* fix for some of this, but I don't like the tradeoffs, given the wide range of things in this category. Isolating that elsewhere is also not good for various reasons I indicated before. A generalized rule-4-y approach could end up doing basically the same thing as preemptively banning it, and people seem dissatisfied with "ignore the channel for a bit". Thus, I'm unsure of how the issue can be solved nicely and it's worth actually investigating the options.
gollark: What a strange name.
gollark: You are to wait while I:- type- think- move a mouse cursor around somewhat- get distracted by unrelated topics repeatedly
gollark: Too bad, you are to wait.
gollark: Somewhat, maybe. Please hold on while I engage in typing™.

See also

List of Acacia species

References
  1. Longmore, Sue; Smithyman, Steve; Crawley, Matt (2010). Inland Plants of the Bellarine Peninsula. Bellarine Catchment Network.
  2. "Acacia implexa Hickory Wattle". Wattle - genus Acacia. Australian National Botanical Gardens. Retrieved 19 January 2019.
  3. "Acacia implexa Hickory Wattle, Lightwood". Specialty Trees. Retrieved 19 January 2019.
  4. "Acacia implexa Hickory Wattle,Lightwood". Plant Selector. Botanic Gardens of South Australia. Retrieved 19 January 2019.
  5. "Acacia implexa Lightwood" (PDF). Species Notes. Florabank. Retrieved 19 January 2019.
  6. "Acacia implexa Benth". Atlas of Living Australia. Global Biodiversity Information Facility. Retrieved 19 January 2019.
  7. Ngunnawal Elders (2014) 'Ngunnawal Plant Use.' ACT Government: Canberra
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