Addisonia 3 



(Plate 194) 



ACACIA PUBESCENS 

 Hairy Wattle 



Native of New South Wales 

 Family Mimosaceae Mimosa Family 



Mimosa pubescens Vent. Jard. Malm. 21. 1803. 



Acacia pubescens R. Br.; Ait. Hort. Kew. ed. 2. 5: 467. 1813. 



About the time of Easter there appears in the windows of the 

 florists a plant of graceful habit, with drooping branches covered 

 with delicate foliage of a greyish blue, and a profusion of bright 

 yellow flowers in round heads. This is the hairy wattle, one of 

 the most charming of the acacias. Those who visited the Inter- 

 national Flower Show a few years ago will recall the wonderful 

 display of these plants, in pot-grown specimens, one of the striking 

 features of that show. The daintiness and gracefulness of the 

 plant, and the pleasing harmony of the delicate foliage and the 

 bright blossoms, make of this one of the most delightful objects in a 

 cool conservatory, where it may be grown either in pots or as a 

 permanent feature planted out. There is a specimen of this species 

 in the central display house at conservatory range 2, New York Bo- 

 tanical Garden ; it is from this plant that the illustration has been pre- 

 pared. There is a collection of about twenty-five kinds of acacias in 

 this same house, and as the flowering period of the diff"erent varieties 

 varies, specimens may be seen in bloom from late in December to 

 late March or early April. They grow rampantly when planted out, 

 luxuriating in the freedom of root-action. 



This was one of the first of the Australian acacias with compound 

 leaves to be brought into cultivation, having been introduced into 

 England about 1790 by Sir Joseph Banks, who also introduced 

 other species of the same genus. 



The hairy wattle is a shrub with hairy branches, compound 

 leaves, and bright yellow flowers. The leaves are one and a half to 

 three inches long and up to one and a quarter inches broad, with 

 the rachis hirsute, and have up to ten pairs of spreading pinnae 

 which are a half to three quarters of an inch long and up to five 

 sixteenths of an inch wide; on the pinnae there are up to twenty 

 pairs of leaflets which are oblong-linear, up to three sixteenths of 

 an inch long, inequilateral at the base, obtuse or acutish at the apex. 

 The globose heads contain fifteen to twenty flowers, are about three 



