352 - AUSTRALIAN NATIVE PLANTS. 
Used in Tasmania for cask staves and treenails. It is also 
useful for rustic work and for fuel. This Acacia has been 
naturalised on the Nilgiris (India) since 1840. The following is 
interesting as showing the facility with which it can be acclimatised 
in Southern India. 
‘* Ootacamund (Madras) was till recently completely over-run 
with this wattle, but owing to the persistent crusade waged against 
it both by the municipality and house-owners, its progress has been 
held in check, only a few full grown trees being left, though much 
remains still to exterminate it. The myriads of suckers which 
spring from the extensive and encroaching wattles come up with 
renewed vigour and amazing rapidity as fast as they are cut down, 
and form an inexhaustible fuel reserve’”’ (Madras Mail), and, 
might be added, an inexhaustible tan-bark supply. 
It is being tried in plantations in the hills of the Punjab, 
North-West Provinces and Sikkim. A specimen of timber cut 
from a tree eleven years old, forty-six feet high, and about twelve 
inches in diameter, is thus described by Mr. Gamble: “Wood 
moderately hard, light-brown, but warps considerably. Pores 
small, often in short linear groups. Medullary rays short, fine, 
and moderately broad, well marked on a radial section.” 
Colonel Beddome, in his report on the Nilgiri Plantations for 
1878, says this wattle grows very readily from the stool, but 
comes up in a dense mass of small twig-like stems, so that it can 
only be depended upon for very small firewood. 
South Australia, Victoria, Tasmania, New South Wales and 
Queensland. 
12. Acacia decurrens, W2//d., var. normalis, Benth., (Syn. A. 
decurrens, Willd.; A. angulata, Desv.; A. sulctpes, Sieb.; 
A. adenophora, Spreng; Mimosa decurrens, Wendl.) ; N.O., 
Leguminose, B.F1., ii., 414. 
“Black Wattle” (from the dark colour of the old bark). ‘ Green 
Wattle” (of the older colonists, and still in use in Southern New South 
Wales, at least). ‘*Feathery Wattle.” ‘* Wat-tah” of the aboriginals of 
the counties of Cumberland and Camden (New South Wales). 
Timber light, tough and strong; suitable for staves; The 
wood is generally much bored by larvze of coleopterous insects. 
