Wattle [Second Edition]

Abstract

Wattle has long been a symbolic flower for the Australian nation. Of course, various acacias were known as useful plants for the many Aboriginal nations long before 1901 and many are using the plants again in ways that reinvigorate Culture. ‘Wattle’ became the Australian word -- as opposed to mimosa and acacia, which are used in the rest of the world where the plants grow naturally or have been introduced, because of the verb, to ‘wattle’ which means to weave. The earliest colonists wove the flexible twigs and split branches of acacias between uprights, plastering them with clay to make insulated walls, particularly when bricks and stone were scarce. This ‘wattle and daub’ building technique, adapted from the practice of using hazel branches in the same way in Britain and northern Europe, gave the trees a distinctive colonial name. Show more