106 
No. 95. 
Acacia aneura, F.v.M. 
/ 
The Mulga. 
(Family LEGUMINOS^E : MIMOSA.) 
IJotailical Description.— Genus, Acacia. (See Part XV, p. 103.) 
Botanical Description. —Species, A. aneura, F.v.M., ill Linncea, xxvi, 627, and 
Fragm. iv, 8. 
A shrub or small tree, often hoary, with a very minute pubescence; branchlets terete, or 
nearly so. 
Phyllodia narrow-linear, obtuse, or with a recurved or oblique callous point, usually flat, but 
thick, H inch to 3 inches long, 1 inch to 11 lines broad, but varying from short and narrow- 
oblong to very narrow and almost terete, without conspicuous nerves, but finely and obscurely 
striate under a lens. 
Spikes shortly pedunculate, J inch to f inch long. 
Flowers mostly 5-merous. 
Sepals very narrow, linear, spathulate. 
Petals smoo'h. 
Pod thin, flat, obliquely oblong, very obtuse, narrowed at the base, 1 inch to 11 inch long, about 
4 lines broad, the sutures edged with a narrow wing. 
Seeds ovate, oblique or transverse ; funicle with two or three short folds, expanded into a small 
membraneous aril under the seed (B.F1. ii, 402). 
Botanical Name. — Acacia, already explained (see Part XV, p. 104) ; 
aneura, from two Greek words— a, not, and neuron, a nerve—in allusion to the 
veins or nerves of the leaves (phyllodes), “ without conspicuous nerves, but finely 
and obscurely striate under a lens.” 
Vernacular Name. —“ Mulga,” the chief ingredient of Mulga scrub, so 
called from the Mulga, or long, narrow shield of wood made by the aborigines 
out of Acacia wood. 
Aboriginal Name. —“ Mulkathandra ” is the name given to the seeds by 
the Dieyerie tribe, of Cooper’s Creek, according to Gason. (Quoted by Brough 
Smyth, Aboriginals of Victoria, i, 223.) “Malka” of certain Lake Eyre tribes 
(Howitt and Siebert). 
Leaves. —The leaves, or, rather, phyllodia—for, in strictness, they are not 
true leaves, but structurally expansions of the leaf-stalks—form excellent food for 
