Pronounciation: A-KAY-sha re-DO-lens

Hardiness zones
Sunset 8-24
USDA 9-11

Landscape Use: Oasis or xeric landscape design themes only as large scale landscape ground cover. This is a sprawling, prostrate, ground cover shrub for expansive spaces such as freeway and interstate embankments.

Form & Character: Low, prostrate (like a pancake), spreading, flat, stiff and generally vigorously spreading, sprawling, aggressive, homely.

Growth Habit: Evergreen, woody, broadleaf perennial shrub, short-lived (15 to 20 years maximum), stiffly branched, fast growth rate with a horizontal spread of 30-feet wide (mostly 10 to 20 feet). Can eventually 'billow' to heights of 4- to 6-feet tall, though low growing cultivars stay at 2-feet tall. Has a tendency to build up a, unattractive, stiff array of dead branches underneath its foliar canopy with age.

Foliage/Texture: Lanceolate shaped phyllodes that vary in length (2- to 6-inches long) and color (grey green to green); medium texture.

Flowers & Fruits: Flowers yellow borne at axillary meristems, not particularly showy. Fruit is a inconspicuous, non-descript pod.

Seasonal Color: Diffuse yellow flower effect in spring.

Temperature: Heat-loving and cold tolerant to 15^oF.

Light: Full sun

Soil: Tolerant of alkaline soils, although the phyllodes tend to yellow somewhat in wet soils of high alkalinity and salinity. Chelate micronutrient fertilizers will correct this problem quickly, but are rarely required.

Watering: Some additional water from irrigation after establishment is needed to maintain plant health and vigor in desert regions of Arizona and eastern California. No supplemental irrigation is required for use of prostrate acacia in coastal California.

Pruning: Little pruning is needed if Acacia redolens is properly located within large landscape space. Unfortunately, it is often planted in landscape spaces that are much too small for it to grow to its natural spread thus requiring frequent 'heading back' of spreading branches.

Propagation: Seed, acid or mechanical scarification needed. Semi hardwood cuttings are successful during the summer months only.

Disease and Pests: Prone to soil borne fungal pathogens in poorly drained soil

Additional comments: Acacia redolens from seed is highly variable in form. Some phenotypes can grow as a mounding shrub others are low and prostrate. Also, Acacia redolens follows the James Dean principle of growing fast and dieing young.

The cultivars 'Desert Carpet' and 'Low Boy' are two selections with intensely prostrate growth habits (like crepes, not pancakes). Regardless, this awkward-growing shrub does not take well to foot traffic AT ALL when used as a ground cover because of its brittle stems and branches. Well-meaning landscape architects often 'spec' this plant as a small scale, shrubby ground cover - a classic landscape failure in as little as two years after planting.

The Final Word: This fast growing, expansive, sprawling shrub has difficulty growing well in the lower Arizona deserts because of the extremely hot summer surface temperatures and today's increasingly smaller, fragmented landscape planting spaces. It is more adapted for expansive landscape plantings in coastal southern and central California. Thus, I put it into the garbage bin of Phoenix landscape loser plants.