Golden Wattle

Acacia pycnantha, commonly known as the golden wattle, is a tree of the family Fabaceae native to southeastern Australia. It grows to a height of 8 m and has phyllodes instead of true leaves.


A Wattle Poem


The bush was grey
A week today
(Olive-green and brown and grey);
But now the spring has come this way
With blossoms for the wattle.


It seems to be 
A fairy tree;
It dances to a melody
And sings a little song to me-
The graceful, swaying wattle.


See how it weaves 
Its feathery sheaves!
Before the wind a maze it weaves,
A misty whirl of powdery leaves-
The dainty, curtseying wattle!


Its boughs uplift
An elfin gift;
A spray of yellow, downy drift,
Through which the sunbeams shower and sift
Their gold-dust o'er the wattle.


The bush was grey 
A week today
(Olive-green and brown and grey);
But now its sunny all the way,
For, oh! the spring has come to stay,
With blossoms for the wattle!


-by Miss Veronica Mason (a Lacashire girl by birth [who] learned to know and love the wattle during her residence in Tasmania. Published 'The Mercury', Hobart, Wed 11 Sept 1912.