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.