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home | glossary | about eucalypts | about EUCLID | browse species Eucalyptus alligatrix subsp. limaensis |
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Eucalyptus alligatrix subsp. limaensis Brooker, Slee & J.D. Briggs Austral. Syst. Bot. 8: 510 (1995) T: Victoria: 0.7 km W of Midland Highway at Swanpool on road to Lima, 13 April 1990, J.D. Briggs 2536; holo: CANB; iso: AD, BRI, K, MEL, NSW) Tree to 30 m tall. Bark rough to small branches or rarely the branches <8cm diam. smooth, rough bark thick, fibrous, coarsely furrowed down trunk, dark grey; branchlets rarely glaucous. Juvenile stem rounded or square in cross-section, glaucous or non-glaucous, warty or smooth; juvenile leaves always opposite, sessile, orbicular or broadly ovate, 2-4.5 cm long, 2.5-5.2 cm wide, margin entire or crenulate, blue-green, grey-green or glaucous. Crown composed entirely of narrowly lanceolate adult leaves. Adult leaves alternate, petiolate, narrowly lanceolate to falcate, 4.8-19.5 cm long, 0.7-1.8 cm wide, base tapering to petiole, margin entire, concolorous, glossy or dull, light green or grey-green, penniveined, moderately to densely reticulate, intramarginal vein parallel to and just within margin, oil glands numerous, mostly island. Inflorescences axillary unbranched, peduncles 0.2-0.8 cm long, 3-flowered; buds sessile to shortly pedicellate, ovoid to diamond-shaped, green or glaucous, sometimes slightly ridged, scar present, operculum conical, stamens inflexed, anthers cuboid or cuneate, versatile, dorsifixed, dehiscing by longitudinal slits (non-confluent), style long, locules 3 or 4, the placentae each with 4 vertical ovule rows; flowers white. Fruit sessile or pedicellate, obconical or campanulate, 0.4-0.7 cm wide, disc raised, valves 3 or 4, strongly exserted. Seed dark grey, brown or blackish, 1-1.6 mm long, ovoid or depressed-ovoid, often pointed at one end, usually lacunose, dorsal surface smooth or shallowly pitted, hilum ventral. NOTES Eucalyptus alligatrix ( Latin alligatrix, she who binds together, refers to the relationship of the species to E. cinerea and E. cephalocarpa of the same taxonomic series) E. alligatrix is a small to medium-sized tree, one of a group of related rough-barked species which have round, opposite, glaucous juvenile leaves. E. alligatrix has three subspecies: subspecies alligatrix from the Eildon area of Victoria has buds are in threes and the crown usually has a mixture of narrow adult and broader intermediate leaves. subsp. limaensis (after a nearby town, Lima, in central Victoria) from further north near Swanpool in Victoria is a taller tree and has a completely adult crown with consistently narrow leaves, is three-budded and has the smallest fruit of the three subspecies. subsp. miscella (Latin miscella, mixed, refers to the 3 and 7-flowered inflorescences on the same tree) has a very restricted distribution near Rylstone, New South Wales, and is a smaller spreading woodland tree with a completely adult crown but with broader leaves than subsp. limaensis, and has buds in a mixture of threes and sevens on the same tree. USES Construction timber. |
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