So I have struggled so hard with this identification stuff.
There is an area in southern Sydney which has, what appears to be, a single species of wattle which is incredibly common. It is along the side of roads everywhere, it is beside trainlines, besides walking tracks, in front yards; it is everywhere. And they are all flowering now (they started at the end of June, and are in full flower now at the middle of july (I've seen one or two with old flowers which look like they might be sprouting beans now?)
Anyway, because of the timing of the flowers and this line from the Sutherland Shire Plants Guide (
http://sutherland.austplants.com.au/Suth_Shire_Plants_Guide_200511.pdf) :
"Renown for the masses of golden flower spikes in spring. Common to open forests across the Shire."
I'm pretty sure it is Longifolia Sub. Long.
It is just frustrating that because of all of the many hundreds of these trees around, I can see so much variation from specimen to specimen. Some have long narrow leaves, some have short rounder leaves. Some leaves look like they have blunt tips, others definitely have pointed tips. Some have nice smooth bark, others ruptured bark. Some are low round bushes, others are tall trees with a central trunk. Sometimes I think the leaves feel thick and strong, other times they feel like thin paper leaves.
This is why for so long I have been walking around in circles going "I think its maidenii. No I think its obtusifolia. No maybe its floribunda...."
The worst complication I have found is that a few times now I have found old seed pods still attached to the tree from last season....and the seed pods are extremely coiled, wrapped around the branch 3-5 times.
Maybe they are just the random exception, and that is why they are still attached when all of the others have fallen off?
Anyway, all of the confusion aside, none of the other species described in the local environment flower at this time of year (Obtusifolia in Nov-Jan, Maidenii Jan-June, Floribunda early spring; so maybe floribunda, but the ones I have tend to have a 'marginal gland', which is meant to distinguish Floribunda)
Anyway, here are some photos of what I think is Acacia Longifolia sub. Long. They were all taken in the first half of July 2015.
This is one of the more tree-like specimens.
You can see the nice long pointed leaves here.
And here you can see the green pubescent stamens to the left, a few freshly flowered ones in the background on the left side (yellow) and lots of older orange coloured flowers to the right.
This is a different tree now, and on this one it looks like the flowers have started to seed.
Another angle of the sprouting beans(?)
A photo of the trunk and branch. This specimen was more bushlike than the other tree above. This tree also tended to have wider phyllodes than the tree. Though it still had reasonably pointed leaves. Some of the bushy ones looked very obtusifolia like...
Aside: I also accidentally stumbled across a heap of Longifolia Sub Sophorae two weeks ago one the coast. They were also flowering. They were a pretty easy identification.
