146 
No. 145. 
Acacia salicina, Lindl. 
The Cooba. 
(Family LEGUMINOSJE: MIMOSEyE.) 
Botanical description.— Genus, Acacia. (See Part XV, p. 103.) 
Botanical description. —Species, A. salicina; Bindley, in Mitchell’s Three 
Expeditions, II, 20 (1839). 
A tall shrub or small tree, with branches often pendulous, the foliage of a pale or glaucous hue 
and quite glabrous ; branchlets scarcely angular. 
Phyllodia mostly straight or nearly so, oblong-linear or lanceolate, obtuse or slightly acuminate, 
much narrowed at the base, 2 to 5 inches long and not above | inch broad, but in some 
varieties occasionally broader or falcate, always rather thick, the midrib scarcely pi’ominent, 
the lateral veins obscurely reticulate, the margins scarcely thickened, the gland very rare. 
Racemes short, irregularly bearing two or three dense globular heads or reduced to a single head. 
Flowers twenty or more, mostly 5-merous. 
Calyx short, truncate, entire or minutely toothed. 
Petals quite smooth. 
Pod straight, 1 to 3 inches long, in the ordinary form not above 3 lines broad ; valves somewhat 
convex, hard and thick. 
Seeds orbicular, longitudinal ; funicle thickened and usually scarlet almost from the base, forming 
several folds under the seed. (B.F1. ii, 367.) 
There are three more or less distinct forms of this species :— 
(«) The plant just described, which may be termed a big Umbrella Bush. 
{h) Yar. varians, Benth., a fair-sized tree which Bentham ( loc. cit.) describes 
-in the following words :— 
Var. varians. Branches more spreading. Phyllodia more veined, the lower ones often much 
broader and almost penniveined, as in A. penninervis, but without the thickened margin or gland. Pod 
about 4 lines broad, the seeds often oblique and the folds of the funicle extending up one side.— A. varians, 
Benth. in Mitch. Prop. Ansi., 132. To this belong all the tropical and subtropical specimens. It is 
generally a very distinct form, and it is with some hesitation that I have followed F. Mueller in considering 
it a variety only of A. salicina. 
( c ) Var. Wayce, Maiden, Proc. Hoy. Soc. S.A., xxxii, 277 (1908), a small 
Umbrella Bush. These three forms will now be dealt with separately. 
