Species numbers

You can derive taxon numbers for members of Acacia sens. lat. by using the WorldWideWattle Advanced Search  feature which is located under Species Gallery. Advanced Search enables species (and taxa) numbers to be obtained for Acacia, Acaciella, Mariosousa, Parasenegalia, Pseudosenegalia, Senegalia, and Vachellia for countries and various other geographic areas of the world.

For user convenience the Tables below summarize species numbers for major geographic areas and also for some areas and taxa (relevant to Australia) where numbers cannot be obtained via Advanced Search.

Acacia sens. lat. comprises almost 1,500 accepted species and these are distributed in tropical, subtropical and warm temperate parts of the world. The general regions in which these species occur are shown in the table below.

Acacia sens. lat. worldwide

Table 1. Numbers of indigenous, currently accepted, described species¹ of Acacia sens. lat. worldwide (numbers derived from WorldWideWattle database)

Genus	Americas	Africa2	Asia	Australia & Pacific	Total no. of spp
Acacia	0	1	11	1079	1084
Acaciella	15	0	0	0	15
Mariosousa	14	0	0	0	14
Parasenegalia	11	0	0	0	11
Pseudosenegalia	2	0	0	0	2
Senegalia	100	69	57	2	221
Vachellia	61	75	33	9	164
Total number of species	203	145	101	1090	1511

¹ Excluding informal taxa and hybrid formula taxa.

² Including Madagascar, Reunion and Mauritius.

Australian species of Acacia

Within Australia there are 1075 currently accepted, described species of Acacia, but this number increases to 1202 when infraspecific taxa are included. There are also 144 informal (Phrase Name) taxa currently recognized in Australia that require further study. The Australian species are widely and unevenly distributed across the continent (see Info Gallery Distribution for more information) and occur in all States and mainland Territories (see Table 2 below). As shown in Table 3 the Australian Acacia flora is contained in seven taxonomic sections. As noted elsewhere on WorldWideWattle there are only 19 species of Acacia that extend beyond Australia.

The genera Senegalia and Vachellia are poorly represented in Australia being represented by two and nine species respectively.

Table 2. Numbers of Acacia taxa and species in Australian and its States and Territories¹ (numbers derived from WorldWideWattle database)

Region	Number of taxa	Number of species
Australia	1202	1075
Western Australia	736	643
Queensland	305	289
New South Wales	256	238
Northern Territory	189	180
South Australia	150	145
Victoria	128	112
Australian Capital Territory	24	23
Tasmania	25	21

¹ Excluding informal taxa and hybrid formula, and taxa of Senegalia and Vachellia

Table 3. Numbers of Australian Acacia species in each of the major infrageneric groups, i.e. Sections¹ (numbers derived from WorldWideWattle database)

Section	Species numbers
Acacia (syn sect. Phyllodineae)	424
Juliflorae	298
Plurinerves	229
Botrycephalae	48
Pulchellae	27
Alatae	23
Lycopodiifoliae	24

¹ Excluding informal taxa and hybrid formula, and taxa of Senegalia and Vachellia

The patterns of distribution of these species across the continent are shown elsewhere on WorldWideWattle.