Shrub or mostly spreading tree 2.5–20 m high. Bark smooth and grey on upper trunk, rough, corrugated, grey or brown to black on lower trunk. Branchlets slightly angled with smooth ridges, often ± pruinose, glabrous, grey-puberulous or densely white-crispato-pilose. Young foliage-tips silvery or whitish, pubescent-tomentose. Leaves bipinnate, green or silvery, ± glaucous; petiole above pulvinus 0.5–2.5 (–3) cm long, not vertically flattened, glabrous, puberulous or crispato-pilose, eglandular or with an apical or median gland; rachis 2–9.5 cm long, glabrous, puberulous or crispato-pilose, with jugary glands at base of one, most or all pairs of pinnae, and with 1–5 tomentulous contiguous or non-contiguous interjugary glands between several pairs of pinnae; pinnae 5–18 pairs, 1.5–5.5 cm long; pinnules 11–45 pairs, mostly cultrate to narrowly oblong, 1–6 mm long, 0.4–1 mm wide, 1-veined, herbaceous or subcoriaceous, either glabrous above and puberulous beneath or with minute, white, crisped hairs on both surfaces, apex obtuse to subacute. Inflorescences in axillary racemes, or terminal or axillary false-panicles; peduncles mostly 3–7 mm long, usually hairy. Heads globular, 20–26-flowered, yellow or golden. Pods usually slightly constricted between seeds, 3–12 cm long, 4.5–12 mm wide, subcoriaceous, red-brown or brownish grey, ± pruinose, ± glabrous or sparsely puberulous. The rachis is sometimes less than 2 cm long with less than 5 pairs of pinnae. The plants sucker freely.
Open forest, usually in association with eucalypts and Callitris species, in poor sandy or gravelly soils, often on basalt or acid granite
Details of ecology, utilisation, etc. of Acacia leucoclada are given in J.C. Doran et al., in J.C. Doran & J.W. Turnbull (eds), Australian Trees and Shrubs: Species for Land Rehabilitation and Farm Planting in the Tropics 170–171 (1997) and D.J. Boland et al., Forest Trees of Australia 5th edn, 162–163 (2006).
Can be grown by seedlings. Seeds needs soaking.
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