Image: Foliage
Fast growing, often crooked, profusely flowering wattle native to South East Queensland and Northern NSW. Good screen plant, gap filler. Hardy in most situations.
Usually a bushy shrub or small tree to 7m high with attractive, weeping light green foliage. New growth is paler, sometimes reddish. Acacia fimbriata is also known as Fringed Wattle because of the microscopic hairs along the phyllodes.
Image: Flowers
Yellow perfumed ball-shaped flowers appear in late winter and spring. Flowers 5-merous; sepals c. 3/4-united, often partially separating with age.
Image: Fruit
Tolerates damp conditions, common in moist sites (good riparian species) and also in open eucalypt communities. Has been listed as a fire retardant species.
Roasted seed tastes like a combination of hazelnut, chocolate and coffee according to Gardening Australia's Colin Campbell.
Food source for Australian King Parrot and Crimson Rosella (seeds) and caterpillars of Imperial Hairstreak Butterfly (Jalmenus evagoras evagoras) (leaves). Medium pollen source for bees.
Image: Tubestock
In a reveg site, Brisbane Wattle responds well to being trimmed of lower branches, which concentrates growth in the canopy and makes it easier to prevent exotic suffocating vines from taking hold.
References and resources
- WattleWeb - Gardening with Wattles - Royal Botanic Gardens Sydney
- World Wide Wattle
- Wild Plants of Greater Brisbane - More than 500 species of our most familiar wild plants, and a few that are less well known, are featured in over 1100 colour photographs; along with brief, easy-to-read, descriptions of the plants and their habitats.
- Create More Butterflies by Frank Jordan and Helen Schwencke - This book contains over 250 full colour photos of butterfly lifecyles and caterpillar food plants for 48 different species of butterflies that occur in the south-east Queensland and northern New South Wales.