OU blog

Personal Blogs

Richard Walker

The Silver Wattle

Visible to anyone in the world

This charming little tree with its delicate foliage is a silver wattle, Acacia dealbata, and a newcomer in our garden.

sketch.png

A. dealbata is a fast growing evergreen, native to south-east Australia, and can reach 30 m in height, so this little tree will need watching.

The flowers of A. dealbata are a mass of bright yellow, picture in the photo from Wikipedia.

250px-Acacia_dealbata-1.jpg

A relative, the golden wattle Acacia pycnantha, also has bright yellow flowers, and is the national flower of Australia. I've read a few stories set in the outback and wattles often got a mention but until now was pretty hazy about what exactly there were.

Acacias belong to the pea family of plants and there about 1,000 different species in Austraila. and Africa. The name acacia and the common name wattle are both interesting words etymologically speaking. Acacia is from the Ancient Greek name for the plant, ἀκακία, "akakia", via Latin. The origins of the Greek name are unclear however; it might be related to PIE *ak-, "sharp", "topmost", as found in words like acute, acid, acropolis, acrobat, acronym.  But other theories suggest it was borrowed into Greek from a pre-Greel language spoken in the region.

Wattle seems to derive from the wattle in the phrase "wattle and daub", a traditional way of constructing walls with a framework of branches roughly plastered with lime plaster or mud, perhaps with horsehair in it. The trees were called wattles in Australia because there they often provided the required branches. Wattle itself comes from a OE word watel, "hurdle", and this may have a connection with weave, but there are different theories and the ultimate origin is unclear.

Image credit: Eugene Zelenko, see here 

Permalink
Share post

This blog might contain posts that are only visible to logged-in users, or where only logged-in users can comment. If you have an account on the system, please log in for full access.

Total visits to this blog: 2984182