Common Name: catclaw acacia
Duration: Perennial
Nativity: Native
Lifeform: Tree
Wetland Status: FACU
General: Native shrub or tree reaching to 6 m or more; bearing hard, heavy, sapwood cream to yellow; heartwood, reddish-brown.
Leaves: Alternate, deciduous, bipinnately compound; 2.5-7.6 cm long, with 2 or 3 pairs of pinnae, each with 4-6 pairs leaflets; pinnae 1-1.5 mm long.
Flowers: Cream colored, fragrant, spikes 5.1 cm long, 13 mm diameter; summer.
Fruits: Legume 5.1-12.7 cm long, 13 mm wide, flat, often twisted and narrowed between seeds; persists into winter.
Ecology: Found on flats, washes, and slopes below 5,000 ft (1524 m).
Notes: Distinguished by the small double-compound leaves less than 7.6 cm long; very stout recurved solitary spines; flat twisted pod constricted between seeds. Note the nomenclature change for the entire genus.
Ethnobotany: Disagreeable because of stout spines, tool handles, fuel, good honey plant, quail, ground up into a meal. Used as an astringent, emollient, disinfectant, antiinflammatory. Havasupai used in basket making.
Etymology: Acacia is from Greek akakie taken from ake or akis, -a sharp point, greggii is reference to Josiah Gregg (1806-1850), a frontier trader and author who worked with Dr. George Engelmann.
Synonyms: Acacia greggii
Editor: SBuckley, 2010
Plant: Shrub or tree to 4 m, armed with curved spines
Leaves: leaves alternate, twice compound with 2-4 pinnae
Flowers: flowers cream in dense elongate clusters
Fruit: a pod with round segments irregularly constricted.
Misc: Flats, washes; 100-1400 m.; Apr-Jun
References: Shreve, F. and I. Wiggins. 1964. Vegetation and Flora of the Sonoran Desert. Standford University Press. Stanford Cal.J.C. Hickman, ed. The Jepson Manual.