Acacia tetanophylla is a shrub of the genus Acacia and the subgenus Plurinerves that is endemic to an area of south western Australia.
The pungent shrub typically grows to a height of 0.6to with hairy to glabrous branchlets. Like most species of Acacia it has phyllodes rather than true leaves. The ascending to erect, rigid and grey-green phyllodes are usually straight and threadlike with a hexagonal cross-section when young. The glabrous phyllodes have a length of and a width of with a total of seven visible nerves.[1] It blooms from August to October and produces yellow flowers. The simple inflorescences are composed of spherical flower-heads with a diameter of containing 13 to 18 usually golden coloured flowers. The firmly papery and glabrous seed pods that form after flowering usually have a linear to narrowly oblong shape with a length up to and a width of . the pods contain shiny dark brown to black coloured seeds with an oblong-elliptic to ovate shape thar are in length.[1]
The species was first formally described by the botanist Bruce Maslin in 1977 as a part of the work Studies in the genus Acacia (Mimosaceae) - Miscellany as published in the journal Nuytsia. It was reclassified by Leslie Pedley in 2003 as Racosperma tetanophyllum then transferred back to genus Acacia in 2006.[2]
It is native to an area in the Great Southern, Goldfields-Esperance and Wheatbelt regions of Western Australia where it is commonly situated on plains along creeks and rivers growing in rock or sandy loams or sandy-clay or sandy soils often over or around granite. The range extends from just south of the Stirling Range in the north-west out to around Ravensthorpe in the south east with outliers near Nyabing and Lake King both of which are further north.[1]