Shrub or tree 1–15 m. high (in our area usually a tree 5 m. or more high); crown flat or spreading; bark on trunk grey to brown and rugose or ± smooth. Young branchlets densely clothed with long grey to slightly yellowish spreading hairs mostly 0.5–2 mm. long, red-brown beneath the hair; epidermis falling away to expose a yellow or sometimes greenish powdery bark on the twigs. Stipules spinescent, mostly short, straight or nearly so, up to 7 mm. long, hairy except towards tips, sometimes (? on young shoots) longer, grey, to 4.5 cm.; “ant-galls” and other prickles absent. Leaves: rhachis mostly 2.5–6 cm. long, hairy; pinnae mostly 8–16(–26) pairs, 1–2.2 cm. long; leaflets 14–28 pairs, 1.5–3.75(–4) mm. long, 0.5–1 mm. wide, ciliate. Flowers cream or tinged red outside, in heads on axillary peduncles (0.5–) 1.5–2.5 cm. long and ± hairy but eglandular, whose involucel is basal or in the lower fifth. Corolla glabrous outside. Pods (Fig. 16/40, p. 67) straight or slightly curved, flattened, papery or sub-coriaceous, grey to grey-brown or purple-brown, dehiscent, narrowed at base and sometimes at top, 7–12.5 cm. long, 1.4–2.9 cm. wide, finely and ± longitudinally veined, glabrous or nearly so.
