Acacia karroo

General Plant Info

'Family:' Leguminosae (= Fabaceae)

'Sub-family:' Mimosoideae

'Genus:' Acacia Mill.

'Species:' Acacia Karroo

'Common names:' Sweet thorn (English); Soetdooring (Afrikaans); muBayamhondoro (Shona); Butema (Kalanga); Gaba (Kalanga); Mimosa thorn (English); Mooka (Tswana); Mookana (bush) (Tswana); isiNga (Ndebele); Orusu (Herero); muUnga (Shona); umuNga (Zulu)

Geographic distribution

Distribution: Acacia karroo is geographically the most wide spread species in southern Africa. The species is present in every country in the Southern African Development Community (SADC)except for Tanzania where it is replaced by the taxonomically similar Acacia seyal (Barnes et al. 1996)

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Habitat: A highly tolerant species as illustrated by the broad geographic distribution. Grows adequately in most soil types and out of all the South African Acacia species it is the most tolerant to low temperatures (Smit 1999)

Identification

Bark: Bark exhibits a colour range varying from dark brown to almost black. The texture is rough and flaky, with a reddish under-bark sometimes visible (van Wyk et al. 2013. Bark is longitudinally fissured with smaller branches (<50mm) having a pale-grey to rust-reddish colour variation (Barnes et al. 1996)

Spines: Young spines are mostly hairless. Older spines are also hairless and are white to greyish-white in colour, occasionally with small dark coloured spots (Smit 1999)

Flowers: Flowers are deep or golden yellow pom-pom like (van Wyk et al. 2013). [[2]]

Seed pods: