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It's a wonderful tree; grows where most others can't and is generous with fluffy yellow flowers and long seed pods. But, living where I do and where it does, I've never heard Acacia used as a human name (there's a suburb called Acacia Park near where I live) and I'm willing to believe that it's because of its long, mean and menacing thorns.

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Anyone who reads Rudyard Kipling's Just-So Stories will remember the Wait-A-Bit Thorn Tree in the story of How the Elephant Got His Trunk. That's an acacia. Its Afrikaans name translates as Hook-And-Stab, because it's got both straight and curved thorns.