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Acacia colei
Also called Kalkardi, Candelabra Wattle
Acacia colei is a drought-tolerant wattle shrub or small tree from arid northern Australia, grown for its golden flower spikes and edible seeds. Give it full sun and very well-drained soil, and water sparingly once established.
Acacia colei, commonly known as Cole's wattle, kalkardi, candelabra wattle or soap wattle, is a species of flowering plant in the family Fabaceae. It forms a spreading shrub or tree with narrowly elliptic, more or less straight phyllodes, spikes of golden yellow flowers, and openly and strongly curved, thinly leathery to crust-like, more or less glabrous pods.
The species is endemic to northern Australia and is adapted to a dry environment. Its seeds are edible.
There are some recent reports that up to 1.8% dimethyltryptamine (DMT) is present in the bark of Acacia colei.
Cole's wattle is found throughout northern Australia between latitudes of 16°S and 22°S from the Pilbara and Kimberley regions of Western Australia in the west extending east through the Tanami Desert and Great Sandy Deserts in the Northern Territory and into the Simpson Desert and Gulf Country of western Queensland. It is well adapted to an arid environment and is found in a variety of habitats including stony hills and ridges, sandplains, floodplains and along drainage lines growing in stony, sandy, clay-loam soils.
Its uses include environmental management, forage, and wood. The seeds have a good taste and can be eaten raw, cooked, or ground into flour. The results of tests in Nigeria for the feasibility of raising the tree as a drought-resistant food crop came out very positively.
Jam wattle · Mulga · Acacia aneura var. major · Mulga · Earleaf acacia · Cootamundra wattle · Gidgee · Bower wattle · Small Philippine acacia · Knife acacia · Silver Wattle · Graceful wattle
Text excerpted from the Wikipedia article Acacia colei by its contributors, under CC BY-SA 4.0; the excerpts and the care summary drawn from them are shared under the same licence.
The care summary was written by AI (Claude, Anthropic) from the sources on this page, with general growing knowledge where they are silent. Check before relying on it.
Life form, climate and native range: World Checklist of Vascular Plants, Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew (CC BY 3.0), reformatted; see Plants of the World Online.
