Acacia hakeoides

Hakea-leaf Wattle

Family: Fabaceae subfamily Mimosoideae

Acacia hakeoides is a shrub or potentially a tree reaching 6 m tall.

Widespread plant, mainly in inland areas of NSW (tablelands to far western plains) as well as Queensland, Victoria, South Australia and into Western Australia. Grows in open forest, woodland and mallee areas, in sandy soils and clay loams.

Australian Wattles at least, can be broadly placed into 1 of 3 recognisable groups:

Group 1: Those that produce juvenile compound-bipinnate leaves and then change to producing adult-phyllodes which are modified-flattened petioles which form the foliage. This is combined with flowers produced in globular balls or heads (or ovoid heads). The heads can be singular in leaf/phyllode axils or arranged in groups.
Group 2: As for Group 1 but flowers are produced in longer rod-like spikes.
Group 3: Those that never produce phyllodes and retain the juvenile compound-bipinnate foliage into adulthood. These always produce flowers in globular balls (which are secondarily arranged into panicle or raceme-like groups in many cases).

This species belongs to Group 1.

Phyllodes (modified leaves) are narrowly oblanceolate straight to slightly curved, to 12 cm long and about 1 cm wide.

Flowers are produced in globular heads with each head having up to 30 flowers, to 6 mm diameter. Heads are arranged in racemes with up to 12 heads per raceme, emerging from leaf axils; bright yellow, in winter and spring.

Pods are straight or twisted, to 12 cm long and 0.7 cm wide.

In the garden

Very hardy, fast growing plant in most soils and is frost resistant. Can sucker if roots disturbed.

Acacias can suffer from a number of pests, including borers, scale, galls and leaf miners. Growing plants suitable to your local environment minimises these occurring.

Propagation

Propagation is easy from scarified seed by covering with boiling water for 24 hours and discarding any seeds still floating on the surface.

Other information

Most wattles regenerate from seed after fire. This species is known to sucker from roots.

Acacia is a highly diverse genus, with over 1500 recognised species (placing it in the top-10 most-diverse plant genera) occurring in most continents except for Europe. Australia has about 970 spp., most of which are endemic. There are also about 10 exotic species. NSW has about 235 recognised species. Some species have become weeds in other states outside of their natural range (e.g., wattles from Western Australia into NSW and vice versa).

Acacia – from Greek Akakia – which refers to an Ancient Greek preparation made from one of the many species; the name of which derives from akis, meaning “thorn” – referring to the thorns of species in Africa.

hakeoides – refers to the likeness of the phyllodes to the leaves of some Hakea species.

This species is not considered to be at risk of extinction in the wild.

Australian National Herbarium – Acacia hakeoides profile page http://www.anbg.gov.au/acacia/species/A-hakeoides.html

NSW Flora Online (PlantNET) – Acacia hakeoides profile page
http://plantnet.rbgsyd.nsw.gov.au/cgi-bin/NSWfl.pl?page=nswfl&lvl=sp&name=Acacia~hakeoides

Wrigley, J.W. & Fagg, M.I. (2001). Australian Native Plants – Propagation, cultivation and use in landscaping. 4^th edition. New Holland Publishers, Pty. Ltd. Australia.

January 2, 2021