Acacia dealbata

Silver wattle

Family: Fabaceae · Type: tree · Not Native

Conservation status: Cal-IPC Yes

Silver wattle is a naturalized tree found in northern coastal California, central valley, central coast, San Francisco Bay Area, southern California, western Transverse Ranges, and southern California islands in disturbed areas and roadsides at elevations below 500 meters. Flowering from February to April, this tree produces pale yellow to cream flowers in racemes occasionally forming panicles with 11 to 30 heads. Growing to 30 meters tall with unarmed branches and silver-blue twigs that are short-hairy, it has distinctive 2-pinnate leaves with a silver-blue appearance. Its compound leaves feature 6 to 30 pairs of primary leaflets and 15 to 70 pairs of secondary linear leaflets, each small and narrow. The fruit is a flat, leathery pod 2 to 11 centimeters long, silver-blue in color and relatively straight.

Habitat: Locally common. Disturbed areas, often roadsides

Bloom period: Feb-Apr

Elevation: < 500 m

Bioregions: NCoRO, ScV, CCo, SnFrB, SCo, WTR, SnGb

California counties: Los Angeles, San Bernardino, Orange, Marin, Santa Cruz, Butte, San Diego, Riverside, Santa Clara, Sacramento, Mendocino, Monterey, Santa Barbara, Sonoma, San Francisco, San Mateo, Ventura, Shasta, El Dorado, Solano, Alameda, Del Norte, Napa, Contra Costa, San Luis Obispo, Yolo, Stanislaus

Data from The California Species Project — 14,000+ California species with verified data from CNPS, CDFW, USFWS, Jepson eFlora, Cal-IPC, and more.