With spring on us now we are beginning to see splashes of yellow across the landscape as many of our local wattles are bursting into flower. Knowing what species you have in your local area is an important skill to have if you are going to collect seed from these species over the upcoming summer months for local revegetation projects.

Below I have provided a list of a range of resources that you may find useful for identifying wattles in the Orange -Bathurst district.

1. One of the first things to do is to generate a list of what wattle species have been recorded in your local area. Two website databases are useful on this front - the first being the Wildlife Atlas on Bionet. Here you can search for survey recordings of wattles (Acacia species by local government area, 1:100,000 map, or Catchment Management Authority area. The second site that can be used to generate a useful wattle list for your local botanical subdivision, a local national park or an area around a population centre - this can be done through the spatial search function on PlantNet.

2. Online resources for identifying wattles. There is a range of resources available online including WattleWeb - a web guide to the wattles of New South Wales, the wattle section of the Flora Online and the Virtual Herbarium at Charles Sturt University.

3. There are a range of books that are useful for identifying wattles, one of my favourites is Leon Costermans book "Native trees and shrubs of south-eastern Australia". Other useful identification guides can be found on the World Wide Wattle website.

4. The electronic key WATTLE - Acacias of Australia is also a useful resource for wattles from all over Australia. On the World Wide Wattle website there are some good notes on how to best use this electronic key which is worth a read.

Wishing you all the best with the identification of your local wattles.