Sweet Acacia
Vachellia farnesiana

LANDSCAPE USE
Fast growing but not long-lived shade tree.

SUN full sun
WATER moderate to low
SOIL not picky, but well-drained
HARDINESS hardy to about 15°F
BASIN high zone
CONTAINER does moderately well in containers but will not attain full size
NUTRITION low
MAINTENANCE prune dead limbs that appear (especially as plants get older); stay on top of seedlings that pop up wherever there is moisture collected

ECOLOGY
Larval host for the Mimosa Yellow (Pyrisitia nise), Marine Blue (Leptotes marina), Ceraunus Blue (Hemiargus ceraunus ssp. gyas), and Reakirt's Blue (Echinargus isola) as well as several species of moths. Flowers are fragrant and visited by many insects.

ETHNOBOTANY
The flowers are processed through distillation to produce a perfume called cassie, which has been described as "delicious". It is widely used in the perfume industry in Europe. Flowers of the plant provide the perfume essence from which the biologically important sesquiterpenoid farnesol is named. Scented ointments from cassie are made in India.
It exudes a gum, which is sometimes collected and used for practical purposes or chewed.
Highly tannic barks are common in general to acacias. Extracts of many are used in medicine and for leather tanning for this reason.
The plant's young leaves, flowers, and seed pods are edible raw or cooked.
The flowers make decent honey for domestic bees.
A black pigment is extracted from the bark and fruit.

NATURAL DISTRIBUTION
Accepts a wide variety of habitats and has become a pest in some regions. Native to southern North America from southern California east to southern Florida, south through Mexico and Central America to northern South America. This is a pioneer plant which occupies disturbed soils—it has become a weed in many regions. In our region it seems to only occupy disturbed habitat and roadsides.

TAXONOMY AND NAME
This species is in the Fabaceae. The genus, Vachellia, has 162 species worldwide.
Formerly known as Acacia farnesiana and Acacia smallii.
The genus Vachellia commemorates Rev. John Harvey Vachell (1798-1839), chaplain to the British East India Company in Macao from 1825-1836 and a plant collector in China. The specific name farnesiana honors Odoardo Farnese (1573–1626) of the notable Italian Farnese family, which after 1550, under the patronage of Cardinal Alessandro Farnese, maintained some of the first private European botanical gardens in Rome, the Farnese Gardens, in the 16th and 17th centuries.