Sydney golden wattle
Acacia longifolia
Family · Fabaceae · Harmless
The wattle of dunes and coastal pinewoods, painting the whole Portuguese coast yellow in February. It is told from its cousins by the flowers, which are not balls but cylindrical spikes.
Dunes and sand · Pine woods · Roadsides and waste ground · Scrubland
Also known asSydney wattle, long-leaved wattle
How to tell it
A shrub or small tree three to eight metres, much branched from the base. Long narrow phyllodes, seven to twenty centimetres, straight, with two to four lengthwise veins. The flowers are the mark: bright yellow cylindrical spikes two to five centimetres, not balls as in the other wattles. Long pods constricted between the seeds.
What it is confused with
Blackwood
Acacia melanoxylon
The flowers decide in a second: cylindrical spikes on Sydney wattle, balls on blackwood. And Sydney wattle's phyllodes are straight and long, blackwood's curved like a sickle. Both are invasive.
Open sheet →What it is for
None to encourage. It was planted en masse to fix dunes in the twentieth century and did exactly that, plus take them over: today it is the main threat to Portuguese dune habitats, because it enriches the soil in nitrogen and changes the rules for sand plants, which need poor soil.
The law says
A listed invasive alien species in Portugal. Do not plant or propagate it.