ACACIA ROTUNDIFOLIA. 
(Round-leaved Acacia.) 
Class. 
POLYGAMIA. 
Order. 
MONCECIA. 
Natural Order. 
FABACEiE, Veg. King. 
Generic Character.— Calyx four or five-toothed. 
Petals four or five, sometimes free, and sometimes 
joined together into a four or five-cleft corolla. Stamens 
variable in number, from 10 to 200 in each flower. 
Legume continuous, dry, two-valved. Bon's Syst. 
Specific Character. — Plant an evergreen shrub, 
three or four feet high. Branches slender, straggling, 
angled, slightly downy. Phyllodia on very short 
petioles, about half-an-inch long, rotundate, but the 
two halves unequal, waved, very obtuse, or rather 
retuse, mucronate, slightly pubescent, the margin in 
the adult ones only obscurely thickened, ciliated, and 
at the upper edge below the middle, furnished with a 
minute gland, deep but not glaucous green. Costa 
excentral, tolerably distinct, and from it diverge a 
few nerves in a pinnated manner. Stipules very 
minute, resembling small, acute, reflexed scales, deci- 
duous. Heads of flowers globose, solitary, or in 
racemes of two to four or five heads, the peduncle 
always longer than the leaves, and the pedicels longer 
than the capitula. Calyx of five deep, linear segments. 
Corolla of five oblongo-ovate petals, nearly twice as 
long as the calyx. Stamens numerous, more than 
twice as long as the corolla.— Hooker, in Bot.Mag. 4041. 
Authorities and Svnonymes.— Acacia, Neck. Elem., 
1297 ; Willd. Spec, iv. p. 1049 ; Be Candolle's Prod., ii. 
p. 448. Acacia rotundifolia, Sir W. Hooker, in Bot. 
Mag., t. 4041. 
For our drawing of this very gay species of Acacia we are indebted to Messrs. 
Low and Co., of Clapton, in whose nursery it flowered in great profusion during 
last February and March. 
It is a native of New Holland, where it is said to form a broad-spreading loose 
shrub, about four feet in height, and as much in diameter, clothing the vast tracts, 
where it grows with a beauty more easily conceived than described. It was 
introduced in 1842, and flowered for the first time in this country in the green- 
house at the Eoyal Botanic Gardens, and was figured and described, by Sir W. 
Hooker, in the Botanical Magazine, t. 4041. 
Its growth is by no means neat, the branches are so loose and straggling ; but 
if trained tastefully to a stick or trellice, with the upper parts of the shoots at 
liberty, they will hang very gracefully, and when covered with the golden globular 
heads of inflorescence, the plant will be an object of great admiration. 
Nearly three hundred species of this extensive genus have already been 
introduced, about two-thirds of which are natives of New Holland ; generally 
speaking, they are amongst the most ornamental greenhouse plants we possess, and 
