Wattle Acacia pendula

Weeping myall looks nothing like the fluffy yellow wattles most people picture. The habit is pendulous, with long grey blue phyllodes hanging from arching branches and reading almost silver from a distance, closer to a small willow in outline than to a Cootamundra wattle. Flowering is modest, small pale yellow balls rather than a blanket of gold. It is a tree of the inland plains, and landscapers use it for avenues and driveways, native windbreak lines, and as a soft grey foil against rendered walls and dark foliage.

Weeping grey foliage from the inland plains

This is a dry country tree and it wants dry country conditions: full sun, heat, open exposure and low water once it is established. It handles heavy clay and alkaline soils that trouble most wattles, tolerates frost and hot wind, and puts on height quickly for a tree of its size. Stake young plants in exposed positions until the trunk stiffens, because the weeping habit lets them whip about. The failure mode is humidity and summer wet. On a warm coastal site with heavy summer rainfall, or in ground that stays damp through the warm months, it goes backwards within a season or two, thins out and dies from the roots up. There is no fix once that starts, so choose it for inland, western and dry temperate gardens, and pick something else on a subtropical coast. Mound the planting position if drainage is at all doubtful. Salt in the soil is not a problem and neither is a long dry spell, but a drip line left running through a warm wet summer does the same damage as the rain would.

Foliage tree, not a flowering one

Against the other two wattles in this batch the difference is foliage. Acacia baileyana and Acacia dealbata are both ferny bipinnate plants grown largely for a late winter flower display, and both are happier in cooler, wetter country than pendula is. Weeping myall is grown for form and colour year round, holds up far better in heat, wind and alkaline soil, and never puts on that sheet of gold. Take pendula for a formal avenue, a hot western boundary or a grey foil in a designed bed; take baileyana or dealbata when the point is fast cover and a winter flower. It is also the only one of the three that holds up as a formal line rather than a loose screen. All three sit under wattle.

Training a clean leader

Train it early. Select a single leader on a young tree, remove competing stems, and lift the lower branches gradually as it gains height so the weeping crown starts above head height on an avenue or a driveway. Prune after flowering in spring, keeping the cuts in green wood, and avoid hard cuts into bare old timber. Established trees need very little beyond the removal of dead or storm damaged wood. Feeding is optional and often counterproductive: on reasonable soil it needs nothing, and a low phosphorus native fertiliser in spring is the most it should ever get. Keep mulch pulled back from the trunk base, which stays sounder dry.

Choosing a size

This plant is available in 2 sizes, from 40L up to 45L, priced from $189.00 to $279.00 per plant. The size shown is the pot the plant arrives in, which is the rootball, not the height of the plant. Every size here is established stock rather than a starter plant, so this line is intended for immediate effect rather than for growing on. Not sure which to choose? Read our guide to Australian native trees.