help with acacia species identification and properties

[clinton miller]

can anyone help identify this species of wattle (acacia ???????) it grows on my parents property in eukey, just south of stanthorpe, QLD. it grows in very rocky ground. the elevation here is just over 1000m, which makes for cold winters and warm summers. average rainfall is 30 iches/year. it is not overly common here, with only a few trees that i know of. it has a pale sapwood and a red heartwood. it's the only wattle i know of around here with red heartwood. i've ripped some staves and billets out of a tree. they are seasoning now. they took some reflex when ripped from the log. as a kid i used to get a suitable bendy branch from this wattle, put a bailing twine string on it and go for it. it used to last really well and flung arrows hard. well for a 12 year old.

[longbow steve]

Looks like Blackwood Clinton (Acacia Melonoxylen) Could be wrong.
Not good in compression, Chrysalls but will make a bow. Steve

[Graeme K]

Steve could be correct but it could also be any one of many similar trees like Salicifolia which grows up that way. You really need a photo of the flowers and seed pods to make a good identification.

Graeme

[longbowinfected]

close up 10-20 times clean cut end grain would help plus info such as its green mass per cubic metre too...which can be determined by the immersion method.....but I reckon both Steve and Graeme are pretty close with what is available.

Kevin

[clinton miller]

sorry i can't get any more photos or info. i'm in canada now for a while.
thanks.

[Glenn]

Clinton with so many species of wattle and with different species being called by the same name you will never be certian what you have. You would be better off sending a small section of it off the the forestry and they will tell you exactly what you have, if you really have to know.
I have seen that wattle growing down that way in the past and always thought I would like to make a bow from it. I would just cut some for staves and billets and try a few. If the timber doesen't work as a self bow or with a backing it might make a very good all wood composite bow...Glenn...

[longbowinfected]

You can send small billets, tiles of timber to me if you wish along with photos and info. I have just finished a degree in Forestry but have been collecting a huge reference collection for years. If I cannot figure it out I have 3 or 4 mentoring professors who can help. Samples of the leaves and fruit/pods etc help as my wife is a horticulturist and arborist....

Just pm me and I can send my contact/address details.

I am sure that guys like Graeme K can also help because of their engineering and bowyer skills/knowledge experience. As a collective this forum is awesome.

Kevin

[clinton miller]

one problem in supplying samples is that i'm presently in canada.

[longbowinfected]

yep, bit difficult from there, but I guess you will not be working on them for a while.....


Kevin

[Dennis La Varenne]

Clinton,

Your pics look very much like the Blackwoods we have down here in Victoria which grow in similar hard country on dry ridges. But there are a lot of subspecies of Blackwoods and as Kevin, Graeme and Glenn suggest, you will really need to have it identified by a trained botanist. The bark, wood and leaves are often similar between sub-species which makes things difficult and the decider is the fruits and flowers.

However, once you have an identification, you can look up the mechanical specs of that specie as a guide to how you can best use it in what design of bow.

Dave (Yeoman) Clarke posted a thread on using maths to blueprint bows. In it, he demonstrated a simple bending test where you can actually calculate the elastic limit and the modulus of rupture of the specific wood you have at hand and apply them to a parallel thickness circular bending flatbow.

One day he is going post (I hope) the maths on blueprinting an eliptical bending flatbow which is the more common design, but there is enough information in his thread to build a bow within the mechanical specs of the wood you have without having to identify it at all.

Dennis La Varenne

[greybeard]

Hi Clinton,

The wattle leaves in your photo look similar to the wattle growing on our club grounds at Yatala, just south of Brisbane.

Black WattleFlowers.jpg (49.83 KiB) Viewed 2444 times

Black Wattle Billet 012.jpg (53.45 KiB) Viewed 2444 times

This morning I was speaking to a bowyer regarding the [black wattle?] and he mentioned that he had successfully made self bows from this material.
A slight convex belly worked for him. It was a balancing act between late and early growth.

As always the timber will dictate what style of bow should be crafted. Other factors to consider are length of bow n to n, draw length and draw weight.
The only way to find out if it is suitable is to have a go.

Grub infestation can present problems when laying out a selfbow. This is a slice off the limb I used for laminations.

Black Wattle Bow copy.jpg (34.82 KiB) Viewed 2442 times

I have used early growth from [black wattle?], a major limb about 5 inches in diameter [the trunk is shown] as core laminations under glass and it worked extremely well i.e. good recovery.

Daryl.

[kimall]

Clinton mabey I can help if you like I could spend a few days hunting the block if there is game AND take some samples and send them off to get tested. I live not that far from Stanthorpe.
Cheers KIM

[clinton miller]

our place is only 24 acres. only rabbits. when i get back from canada i'll look you up and go for a hunt somewhere. i'm always keen to meet new hunting partners.

[kimall]

Cheers mate I might be able to get you onto a few goats.
KIM

[Mick Smith]

I'm very keen to harvest some black wattle here in southern Victoria. The only trouble is, the tree I know as black wattle doesn't look anything like the ones pictured in the posts above.

I have many, of what I thought were black wattles growing on my property, but they have completely different leaves and trunk. Here's a link which has photos of black wattles (the ones I have) ... http://asgap.org.au/APOL19/sep00-4.html

There are varieties of wattle that grow hereabouts that do look very similar to the ones in Greybeard's photos.

Which is the best wattle for making selfbows? Does anyone know it's scientific name?

Mick

[longbow steve]

Hi Mick, The Blackwattle I know looks like yours, alot of folk call Blackwood and subspecies of blackwood, Blackwattle did you get that?Steve

[DylanK]

Clinton mabey I can help if you like I could spend a few days hunting the block if there is game AND take some samples and send them off to get tested. I live not that far from Stanthorpe.
Cheers KIM

I was gonna suggest the same thing, only 3 hours from there

Dylan

[giaCAMO FLAGEioli]

hi mate , a website to delve into that may help is called "worldwidewattle.com"
U might be able to track it in there , goto identification in its menu and navigate in from there, google in " Australian wattle identification " or similar phrase and there might be other sites that will have ID files to search / compare .
good luck in your quest....... Nat

p.s. -- a google image search with a phrase such as " australian wattle species " , " australian acacia species " etc. , might make it easier to search , if anyone has ID'd and logged it online , its image will turn up , image search a bit quicker than trolling endlessly thru sites , hope this helps ya mate

[danceswithdingoes]

Glenn Newell or Alan Camp would be your best bet for an id.

[clinton miller]

i'm leaving canada very soon to go back home. so i will be able to follow up on things.

kimall- pm me with where you are in toowoomba and i'll drop round to meet you. have to go there anyway to get stuff from the inlaws before we move to Gove, NT. maybe i can bring a stave with me.

any other timbers worth cutting staves out of up stanthorpe way anyone??
i'll need to get them cut while i'm there before we move on to the NT.

[danceswithdingoes]

I'm very keen to harvest some black wattle here in southern Victoria. The only trouble is, the tree I know as black wattle doesn't look anything like the ones pictured in the posts above.

I have many, of what I thought were black wattles growing on my property, but they have completely different leaves and trunk. Here's a link which has photos of black wattles (the ones I have) ... http://asgap.org.au/APOL19/sep00-4.html

There are varieties of wattle that grow hereabouts that do look very similar to the ones in Greybeard's photos.

Which is the best wattle for making selfbows? Does anyone know it's scientific name?

Mick

Mick, Acacia Dorotoxylon, Lancewood/Spearwood, is quite a good wood, as is Motherinbah (scientific name?) a tall straight wattle from the Warrumbungles in northern NSW.

[Mick Smith]

Many thanks DWD.

There doesn't seem to be many lancewood trees in Victoria, but there are some, apparently. I've done a fairly extensive Google search on the subject.

I have noticed some very similiar looking trees growing not that far from home, so you can bet that I'll be checking them out thoroughly.

I couldn't find any references to a tree with the name of 'motherinbah' though.

Mick

[Laurent]

Acacia spirorbis ,I think!
I have exactly the same in my garden

[danceswithdingoes]

not spirorbis, too far south for that one, I cant remember the name for motherinbah, Alan Camp and Ron White came up to Coona in 2001 and we tracked down some nice staves, grows tall upwards of 20m straight up with a tuft of foliage at the top and long sickle leaves. Has some of the best bow properties ever. Another you could try in Stanthorpe to find these http://www.worldwidewattle.com/speciesg ... iflora.php

[clinton miller]

thanks but the link wouldn't work for me. tried googling it too, still no luck.

[danceswithdingoes]

link works for me Acacia Sparsifolia was the species, it may even be the one you originally photographed as the juveniles have a fatter leaf which gets slender as it matures.

[clinton miller]

maybe it's Acacia implexa?????????

what sort of limb cross section should i use? i'll be back in stanthorpe for good very soon so i'm going to have a go at making a self bow. what demensions should i start with?

[muntries]

Clinton, top photo is definitely Acacia implexa! Have a look at the seed and if the fleshy arils around the black seeds are white its implexa, if it's red its blackwood (A. melanoxylon). Very closely related species. Melanoxylon also has blunt leaf tips and not as sickle shaped leaves.

[muntries]

Ok, I would say that this is almost definitely not Acacia melanoxylon (blackwood, tasmanian blackwood) Blackwood also has a very disjunct population in queensland and northern NSW but others may disagree. Rocky soils maybe but it likes to be quite near to water sources such as creeks, swamps (tas and southern vic) and damp depressions.

Others that look like this is Golden Wattle (Acacia pycnantha) but is often a scrappy tree when I see it and it has one central vein down the Phyllode (leaf). Other one that I know of is Acacia implexa (lightwood) and can grow to a tree about 15-20m, flowers are round pom poms and occur on branched clusters rather than the bottlebrush ones occuring on some ofther acacia species, A. implexa also tends to flower sporadically in Summer through to Autumn rather than usual winter flowering and spring flowering of most Acacia. A. implexa also has multiple veins along the phyllode like blackwood.

As far as I know lightwood was valued for its timber in the past, not sure about populations in the north but those of Vic tend to suffer from a lot of problems of gall attack on the smaller branches and also small fragmented populations mean that a lot of the existing stands of it in Vic are inbred and dying out

Hope that helps. Provide me with an updated photo of leaves, flower buds and any old pods on the tree and we might be able to wittle it down to a few.

[fieldpoint]

The photos I have placed here are eucalypt froma stand of bush being cleared for a new road - near Brisbane. I split this half log today as it was showing a few small longitudinal cracks. I don't know what this timber is called but would like to know in case teh longbow I make actually turns out okay.

Brian H