Vachellia farnesiana

Sweet acacia

Family: Fabaceae · Type: shrub · Not Native

Sweet acacia is a naturalized shrub found in disturbed areas and urban landscapes, potentially introduced across multiple California regions at low elevations. Flowering from spring to summer, this plant produces bright yellow to dull orange flowers in small clustered heads that are sweetly fragrant. Growing as a multi-stemmed shrub or small tree up to 8 meters tall, it has distinctive white stipular spines ranging from 7 to 30 millimeters long. Its leaves are delicate and feathery, composed of 2 to 6 pairs of primary leaflets, each bearing 8 to 19 pairs of small oblong secondary leaflets. The fruit is a leathery, cylindrical pod 9 to 18 millimeters wide, containing seeds embedded in a sweet pulp.

California counties: San Diego, Riverside

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