684 Journal of Agriculture, Victoria. [ii Nov., 1912. 



OiY WATTLES AND WATTLE-BAKK. 



I Alfred J. Eivart, D.Sc, Ph.D., Professor of Botany and Plant 

 Physiology in the Melbourne University. 



The efforts of the Field Naturalists' Club and of the Wattle League 

 have recently drawn considerable attention to our native wattles as 

 plants of sufficient bt^auty to be regarded as the national Hower of 

 Victoria or of Australia, and also as being possessed of sufficient 

 economic value to be worthy of cultivation and to be protected from 

 destruction when growing wild. In regard to the question of the 

 wattle as the national tlower for Australia, several points of interest 

 may be noted. In the tirst place, the name " wattle " is an instance 

 of one of those misnomers, or at least words with altered meanings, 

 which are so common in Australia. The word "wattle" is 

 usually applied to the fleshy appendages hanging from the heads of 

 such birds as fowls, and hence the Australian wattle bird receives 

 its name, not from any association with the plants, but from the fleshy 

 appendages which hang from its ears. The name wattle applied to 

 acacias is derived from the Anglo-Saxon word " watel," meaning 

 a hurdle, and hence came to be applied to the osier, Salix viminalis, 

 one of the common European willows from whose flexible twigs 

 hurdles were usually woven. The early colonists in New South Wales, 

 using the branches of acacia for similar purposes and for stiffening 

 the mud walls of their huts, applied to these acacias the name of 

 wattle, which has since persisted and passed into general popular 

 use. Strictly speaking, the name wattle should not be used as a 

 general term for all acacias, but only to a certain limited number of 

 species, and it would not be correct to apply it to acacias which grow 

 outside Australia. 



With regard to the wattle as the Australian national flower, 

 this is of course entirely a matter for public opinion, and in time the 

 latter is bound to crystallize aroimd some particular plant. The 

 wattle has much in its favour as regards beauty and fragrance as 

 a national floral emblem. From a botanical stand-point, however, 

 the acacias are not nearly as typically Australian as certain other 

 genera, notably eucalyptus. Out of a total of 296 species of 

 eucalyptus, only 25 occur elsewhere, and of these few species all are 

 natives of districts not widely separated from Australia. On the 

 other hand, out of a total of 767 species of acacia known to science, 

 some 417 species are Australian, 112 species are native to Africa, 

 and 234 species grow in other countries. 



Hence there would be no valid cause of objection if any other 

 country — South Africa, for instance— were also to adopt the wattle 

 as its national flower; and although the eucalyptus is peculiarly 

 Australian, it now grows in such abundance in many parts of the 

 world as to form a characteristic feature of the forest flora, and to 

 give rise to the possibility of its being adopted as a national flower 

 for certain of the States in North America, or for some of the smaller 

 Principalities in Europe, not as yet provided with a national floral 



