Earleaf acacia

Acacia auriculiformis, commonly known as earleaf acacia, earpod wattle or northern black wattle, is a medium-sized evergreen tree in the family Fabaceae native to northern Australia, the southern New Guinea lowlands and parts of eastern Indonesia, and now widely cultivated and naturalised across the tropics for fuelwood, shelterbelts and reforestation. Mature trees typically reach 8 to 20 metres in height with a short, often crooked trunk and a dense, dark-green spreading crown; the bark is grey to grey-brown, smooth on young trees and becoming longitudinally fissured with age. True leaves are bipinnate only on seedlings; the photosynthetic organs of mature plants are flattened phyllodes 8 to 20 centimetres long and 1 to 5 centimetres wide, sickle-shaped to broadly falcate, with three to seven prominent parallel longitudinal veins. Bright golden-yellow flowers are crowded into cylindrical spikes 6 to 9 centimetres long that arise in axillary clusters during the rainy season. The distinctive fruit is a flattened, woody, tightly coiled and twisted pod 4 to 10 centimetres long that gives the species both its common and Latin names, and contains shiny black seeds attached by orange-red arils.