Plant Profile
Acacia Saligna
Common names: Port Jackson Willow, Port Jackson wattle, coojong, golden wreath wattle, orange wattle, blue-leafed wattle
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Tree
Up to 6 m
Evergreen
Alien 2
Full Sun
Little water
Any Soil
Wind Resistant
Frost Tender
Acacia saligna, is a small, dense, spreading tree with a short trunk and a weeping habit. It is fast-growing, drought-tolerant nitrogen-fixing tree from southwestern Western Australia has been widely planted through the world’s drylands, for fodder, fuelwood, sand stabilization, as a windbreak and as an ornamental garden or street tree.
A. saligna is a dense and multi-stemmed, thornless, spreading shrub or single stemmed small tree 2-6 m tall, but up to 8 m in height where it has become naturalised. It is commonly a dense bush which may be wider than the plant is high.
A. saligna reproduced almost entirely by seed and is an outcrossing species, however, it is known to produce root suckers also and a single tree may form a clump or small colony
Foliage
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Leaves are phyllodes, dark green to blue-green with conspicuous midribs, long and narrow to lanceolate and 8-25 cm long, straight or sickle-shaped and sometimes pendulous.
Flower
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Inflorescence racemose, flower heads globular, 5-10 mm in diameter, containing 25-55 (up to 78) bright yellow, five-parted flowers.
NOTES
Referring to invasion of threatened Cape Floristic vegetation in South Africa, it was called “one of the worst woody invaders, a plant that has run amuck in a threatened biome, rich in endemic plant species”, however, a successful biocontrol programme has since largely contained the problem here. Prolific seed production, ready coppicing and suckering ability, and rapid growth on even the poorest of sites make it a high risk species
It grows voraciously in deep sands and loams associated with watercourses, and in coastal dunes, more commonly in the hollows between dunes. It is also found on disturbed roadsides, and further inland in the wheatbelt, populations occur at the base of many of the large, granitic rock outcrops.
It has spread on a variety of habitat types in South Africa including the fynbos, forest, karoo and grassveld, where it has also spread to waterways and irrigation channels Africa. Its hardiness and ability to coppice rapidly after fires or from trunks has also led to widespread establishment.
