About Acacia cognata Domin
Acacia cognata (common name bower wattle) is an erect or spreading shrub or tree that typically reaches a height of 3–10 m (9.8–32.8 ft) and is often sticky. Its branchlets are usually glabrous, willowy, and arching, and its bark is smooth, and ranges in color from grey to greyish brown. Its flattened leaf-like structures called phyllodes are linear to very narrowly elliptic, measuring 40–100 mm (1.6–3.9 in) long and 1–3.5 mm (0.039–0.138 in) wide, and are colored dark green to yellowish green. Flowers of this species grow in two spherical heads in leaf axils, on a stalk called a peduncle that is usually 3–6 mm (0.12–0.24 in) long. Each flower head is 4–5 mm (0.16–0.20 in) in diameter and holds 10 to 17 pale lemon-yellow flowers. Flowering takes place from July to November. After flowering, it produces linear, papery, glabrous seed pods that grow up to 100 mm (3.9 in) long and 2–4 mm (0.079–0.157 in) wide, with a slightly raised surface over the seeds inside. The seeds are dark brown, oblong, 4.0–4.5 mm (0.16–0.18 in) long, and have a fleshy aril at one end. Bower wattle grows in granite-based soils in moist gullies and hillsides within forest habitat. It occurs on the coastal plain and adjacent foothills of the Great Dividing Range, extending south from the Nowra district in New South Wales to near Orbost in Victoria, with an additional isolated population near Pokolbin in New South Wales.
