Star acacia

Acacia verticillata, the star acacia or prickly Moses, is an evergreen perennial shrub or small tree of the family Fabaceae native to south-eastern Australia, reaching up to about 10 metres tall with a spreading habit. The branchlets are slender, ribbed and finely pubescent, bearing whorl-like clusters of stiff, sharply pointed phyllodes that act as leaves; each phyllode is linear to narrowly lanceolate, 5 to 25 millimetres long and 1 to 7 millimetres wide, rigid, dark green and tipped with a needle-like point. Small bristly stipules 0.5 to 2 millimetres long persist at the base of each phyllode cluster. Flowers are borne from July to December in axillary cylindrical spikes up to 4.5 centimetres long, densely packed with light yellow to pale lemon, sweetly scented globose florets composed largely of long stamens. The fruit is a linear, slightly flattened pod 2 to 8 centimetres long and 3 to 5 millimetres wide, dark brown when mature, splitting to release elliptic black seeds about 3 to 4 millimetres long bearing a small aril. The species occurs in woodland, heath, gully forest and coastal scrub of Tasmania, Victoria, New South Wales and South Australia.