Acacia splendens

Acacia splendens is a tree or shrub of the genus Acacia and the subgenus Phyllodineae that is endemic to a small area of western Australia.

Description
The tree or shrub typically grows to a height of 8 m and has an open habit. It has thick, glabrous branchlets that are angled at the extremities and covered in a fine white powdery coating. Like most species of Acacia it has phyllodes rather than true leaves. The glabrous phyllodes are found at the end of obvious stem-projections forming narrow wings that are 6 to 12 cm in length and 1 to 8 cm wide and have one nerve per face and finely penninerved. It blooms in May and produces yellow flowers. The inflorescences are found on a raceme that is 1.5 to 15 cm in length. The spherical to obloid shaped flower-heads contain 33 to 75 golden coloured flowers. Following flowering glabrous, firmly chartaceous, narrowly oblong seed pods form that are up to 14 cm in length and 7 to 12 mm wide and are covered in a fine white powdery coating. The shiny black seeds inside the pods have an oblong to elliptic shape with a length of 5 to 6 mm with a dark red-brown club shaped aril.

Taxonomy
The species was first formally described by the botanists Bruce Maslin and Carole Elliott in 2006 as a part of the work Acacia splendens (Leguminosae : Mimosoideae), a new rare species from near Dandaragan, Western Australia as published in the journal Nuytsia.

Distribution
It is native to a small area in the Wheatbelt region of Western Australia all found in a single population to the north west of Dandaragan growing gravelly loam soils among laterite breakaways as a part of low Eucalyptus woodland communities.