Acacia neovernicosa

Many of the finest ornamentals for the southern garden come from the deserts of the Southwest, and this Chihuahuan legume is a quietly handsome example. Acacia neovernicosa is an upright, spreading, thorny shrub clothed in twice-compound leaves so finely divided that the whole plant takes on a soft, smoky texture. The foliage carries a faint varnish, sticky to the touch, which gives the species both its botanical name and its common one, viscid acacia. In spring the branches are studded with small golden puffballs of bloom, abundant and sweetly fragrant, loud with bees on a warm morning.

It is native to the sunny, gravelly limestone hills of west Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona, ranging south into Mexico, and it carries that desert toughness with it: drought, heat, and lean soil are no trouble at all. Like other legumes it fixes its own nitrogen, asking little of the ground it grows in. Give it full sun, sharp drainage, and freedom from crowding, and it proves surprisingly cold hardy for a plant of such warm origins.

In the garden it earns a place in a gravel or xeric planting, a hot sunny bank, or a wildlife border where its fragrant flowers feed pollinators and its thorny frame offers cover and nesting. Site it where the fine foliage can be seen against open sky or a darker backdrop, and keep it back from paths, since the thorns mean business.