Black wattle

Acacia implexa, commonly known as hickory wattle or lightwood, is a medium-sized tree in the family Fabaceae endemic to eastern Australia, ranging from Queensland through New South Wales to Victoria and Tasmania. It typically grows 5–15 m tall with a slender, somewhat open crown and smooth to finely fissured grey-brown bark on older trunks. Like many Australian acacias, mature plants bear phyllodes rather than true leaves; these are falcate (sickle-shaped), 7–20 cm long, 6–25 mm wide, grey-green, leathery, with three to five prominent longitudinal veins. Seedlings briefly produce bipinnate juvenile foliage. Flower heads are pale cream globular puffs about 5–8 mm across, arranged in axillary racemes that appear in mid to late summer — later than most Australian wattles. Pods are flat, twisted to coiled, brown, 10–20 cm long, containing hard black seeds with a fleshy yellow aril. The species favours dry sclerophyll forest and woodland on a range of soils.