CHAPTER V
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 26 April 2011
Summary
North of Charlotte Waters the country for many miles is as uninteresting as usual–that is, from a scenic point of view–the stony gibber plains giving place, however, to undulating sandy country with monotonous mulga and giddea scrub. In one or two parts, but only very rarely, we met with a peculiar variety of acacia known as red mulga. It bordered the beds of dry watercourses which ran across a special narrow belt of country, and we never met with it save in this limited area. The tree (A. cyperophylla) reaches a height of twenty feet, and its bark, alone amongst acacias, is deciduous, peeling off in little, curly red flakes, to which it owes its name. In general form, with its stiff wiry branches and thin foliage, it resembles the ordinary mulga (Fig. 29). The acacias differ in their form of growth to a wonderful extent, not only as between different species, but within the limits of the same species. For the most part the foliage of the mulga is dull olive-green, and its branches have a strong tendency either to diverge from a common base or to spread out fanwise, there seldom being any single main stem of any height.
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- Across Australia , pp. 74 - 98Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2010First published in: 1912