Flat-topped shrub or tree 1–3.5 m high, often many-stemmed. Bark smooth, grey or mottled with brown. Branchlets terete or obscurely angled, pruinose, with spreading ± stiff cream-coloured hairs, or glabrous. Young foliage-tips cream-coloured, villous. Leaves subcoriaceous, pale green, subsessile with basal pinnae arising immediately or to 2 mm above pulvinus, with a small orbicular gland at insertion of basal pair of pinnae; rachis 1–6 cm long, with minute orbicular jugary glands often inconspicuous or missing from some pairs of pinnae, interjugary glands absent; pinnae (3–) 8–19 pairs, (0.2–) 0.5–1.2 (–1.5) cm long, with lower pairs shorter than others; pinnules 4–14 pairs, narrowly ovate, orbicular or oblong, 0.8–2 (–2.5) mm long, 0.5–1 (–1.3) mm wide, hispidulous especially below and on margins, obliquely subcordate at base, obtuse, broadly rounded or subacute at apex. Inflorescences in axillary racemes, or axillary or terminal false-panicles; axis zig-zagged; peduncles 1–3 mm long, hairy or rarely glabrous. Heads globular, 3–5 mm diam., 15–40-flowered, golden. Pods straight to slightly curved, 1.5–11.5 cm long, 4–6.5 mm wide, subcoriaceous, blue-black or dark brown, paler between seeds, with stiff silver hairs.
Grows in mallee and eucalypt woodland communities, on open plains, foothills or ridges, especially in moist situations, drainage lines and on stream banks, in red sandy loams or gravelly clays.
A widely cultivated shrub with attractive foliage and bright yellow blooms, adaptable to a variety of situations and soils (T. Tame, Acacias of Southeast Australia 199, 1992). Acacia cardiophylla ‘Gold Lace’ is a prostrate registered cultivar (M. Hitchcock, Australian Plants 22: 325, 2004).
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