The glabrous branchlets are more or less terete and occasionally covered in a fine white powdery coating.

[4] The species was first formally described by the botanist Augustin Pyramus de Candolle in 1825 as part of the work Leguminosae.

It was reclassified as Racosperma penninerve by Leslie Pedley in 1986 then transferred back to genus Acacia in 2006.

[8] The 1889 book The Useful Native Plants of Australia records that common names included "Hickory" and "Blackwood" and that "The bark (and, according to some, the leaves) of this tree was formerly used by the aboriginals [sic.]

Neither the leaves nor bark contain strictly poisonous substances, but, like the other species of Acacia, they would be deleterious, owing to their astringency.