CAT-00110
Colony wattle
Acacia murrayana
Catalog fields
- Genus
- Acacia
- Photo
- Not recorded
- Edible
- Yes
- layout
- single
- Habitat
- Grows in sand on dunes, plains or along streams, often with mulga or spinifex. An adaptable, fast-growing species with a life-span of about 10–25 years. It is highly fire-tolerant and resprouts readily after wildfires; it is drought-adapted but not especially drought-tolerant. It forms colonies from subsurface adventitious sprouts often a considerable distance from the parent plant. Further information concerning the biology and ecology of Acacia murrayana is provided in J.W. Turnbull (ed.), Multipurpose Australian Trees & Shrubs 170–173 (1986), J.C. Doran et al., in J.C. Doran & J.W. Turnbull (eds), Australian Trees and Shrubs: Species for Land Rehabilitation and Farm Planting in the Tropics 190–191 (1997), and B.R. Maslin & M.W. McDonald, AcaciaSearch: Evaluation of Acacia as a woody crop option for southern Australia, pp. 142–147, RIRDC Publication No 03/017 (2006).
- Published
- Yes
- Food group
- Nut / seed
- Latin name
- Acacia murrayana
- Fruit photo
- Not recorded
- Plant title
- Colony wattle
- Source URLs
- https://profiles.ala.org.au/opus/foa/profile/Acacia%20murrayana | https://www.fao.org/4/V5360E/v5360e0b.htm; https://plantnet.rbgsyd.nsw.gov.au/cgi-bin/NSWfl.pl?lvl=sp&name=Acacia~murrayana&page=nswfl Open source ↗ Open source 2 ↗ Open source 3 ↗
- Catalogue ID
- CAT-00110
- Mature width
- Not confirmed; allow spread appropriate to growth habit
- Native range
- Widespread in the arid zone from North West Cape and Shark Bay, Western Australia, through Northern Territory and South Australia to the western margin of the Great Divide near Mitchell (Queensland) and Narrabri (New South Wales).
- Plant family
- Fabaceae
- Supplier SKU
- Not recorded
- Listing group
- Regional / traditional food plant
- Mature height
- 2–6 m
- Native states
- NSW, NT, QLD, SA, WA
- Original list
- No
- Research date
- 10/10/2026
- Research notes
- Profile enriched from botanical/nursery sources. Dimensions are unpruned regional estimates where available; missing measurements remain explicit. Seasons are regional guides and vary with climate, location, cultivar and plant maturity. Drought and cultivation guidance are qualitative garden inferences, not measured ratings.
- Evidence status
- Published food use; preparation detail review pending
- Fruiting season
- Pods after flowering.
- Background photo
- Not recorded
- Edible component
- Processed mature seeds
- Flowering season
- September-November in NSW flora.
- Brief description
- Bushy inland wattle that may sucker.
- Drought tolerance
- High once established.
- Preparation notes
- Species-specific edible seed use; mature seeds generally processed/roasted. Do not generalise to other wattles.
- Flower description
- Bright-yellow flowers in rounded heads.
- General cultivation
- General guidance (qualitative): Trial sunny freely draining ground; contain suckering growth.
- Botanical description
- Shrub or tree to 5 (–8) m high, commonly suckering and forming colonies. Branchlets often pruinose, glabrous. Phyllodes linear to narrowly elliptic, sometimes oblanceolate, 5–15 (–20) cm long, 1.5–8 (–20) mm wide, with a minute callous ± curved mucro overtopping the gland, thinly coriaceous, often drying finely longitudinally wrinkled, pale green to glaucous, glabrous; midrib not prominent; lateral veins obscure and longitudinally anastomosing; glands basal, and at base of mucro. Inflorescences 2–10-headed racemes; raceme axes 1–6 cm long, slender, glabrous; peduncles 4–10 (–15) mm long, slender, glabrous; heads globular, densely 25–50-flowered, light golden to mid-golden. Flowers 5-merous; sepals ± free. Pods narrowly oblong, prominently rounded over seeds, to 9 cm long, 8–12 mm wide, chartaceous, sometimes pruinose, glabrous. Seeds transverse to oblique, oblong, elliptic, ovate or ± orbicular, 4–5.5 mm long, shallowly depressed at centre, black, dull, exarillate.
- Other botanical names
- Not recorded
- Attracts birds and bugs
- Native bees and insects visit flowers; canopy shelters birds.
- Flora of Australia profile
- https://profiles.ala.org.au/opus/foa/profile/Acacia%20murrayana Open source ↗
- Fruit type and description
- Flat papery pods containing seeds.
- Flora of Australia citation
- B.R. Maslin. Acacia murrayana. Flora of Australia, Australian Biological Resources Study, Department of Climate Change, Energy, the Environment and Water, Canberra. https://profiles.ala.org.au/opus/foa/profile/Acacia%20murrayana (accessed 2026-10-14). Copyright Commonwealth of Australia; CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). HTML formatting removed; species-level context added where noted. Open source ↗ Open source 2 ↗
- Flora of Australia retrieved
- 14/10/2026