#1732 - Acacia cochlearis - Rigid Wattle
While the focus in this photo is on the unidentified galls, the leaves are distinctive enough to identify the host - a shrub wattle up to 3m tall, growing in sandy soils in coastal areas on sandplains and sand dunes. Found from Lancelin to Israelite Bay, where it is found growing as solitary plants or in dense thickets - it certainly does all of that in the places I’ve seen it.
It flowers from July to October, with the flower heads spherical and yellow, and not easily distinguished from the majority of other wattles.
Rigid Wattle was first formally described by the botanist Jacques Labillardière in 1807 as Mimosa cochlearis as part of the work Novae Hollandiae Plantarum Specimen. It was then reclassifed as an Acacia by Heinrich Wendland in 1820 as part of the work Commentatio de Acaciis aphyllis, reclassified again in 2003 by Leslie Pedley as Racosperma cochleare then transferred back to genus Acacia in 2006 in that controversial taxonomic decision I’ve mentioned elsewhere.
