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home | glossary | about eucalypts | about EUCLID | browse species Eucalyptus aromaphloia subsp. sabulosa |
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Western scent bark |
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Eucalyptus aromaphloia Pryor & J.H.Willis subsp. sabulosa (Rule) Slee & Brooker, Field Guide to Eucalypts vol. 1 (1999) 345 (revised edition) Eucalyptus sabulosa Rule, Muelleria 9: 138 (1996) T: 23 km south of Nhill, Victoria, 4 May 1981, G.C.Cornwall 340; (MEL 641778). Tree to 15 m tall. Bark rough to small branches or branches < 8 cm diameter smooth; rough bark thick, furrowed longitudinally, dark grey to blackish, densely fibrous, sometimes with horizontal black scars, smooth branches salmon-coloured, sometimes with ribbons of decorticated bark in the upper branches. Juvenile stem rounded in cross-section, warty or smooth; juvenile leaves usually shortly petiolate, opposite for 8-20 pairs then becoming alternate (but may revert to opposite for a few nodes), narrowly lanceolate, narrowly oblong to linear or narrowly falcate 2.5-9 cm long, 0.4-1.2 cm wide, margin entire or crenulate, usually green, new growing tips not glaucous. Adult leaves alternate, petiolate, narrowly lanceolate to falcate, 7.5-16 cm long, 1-2 cm wide, base tapering to petiole, margin entire, concolorous, slightly glossy or dull, green, penniveined, moderately to densely reticulate, intramarginal vein parallel to and well removed from margin, oil glands island or intersectional. Inflorescences axillary unbranched, peduncles 0.3-0.7 cm long, 7-flowered; buds pedicellate, ovoid to fusiform, yellow or green, scar present, operculum conical, stamens inflexed or irregularly flexed, anthers cuneate or cuboid, 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 pedicellate or sessile, cup-shaped, hemispherical or obconical, 0.4-0.6 cm wide, disc raised or level, valves 3 or 4, strongly exserted. Seed dark brown or black, 1-2 mm long, ovoid or depressed-ovoid, usually lacunose, dorsal surface shallowly pitted, hilum ventral. NOTES E. aromaphloia is a small to medium-sized tree endemic to Victoria. Once confused with E. viminalis subsp. cygnetensis, it differs by the whole trunk being rough-barked, often deeply furrowed like an ironbark, by the juvenile leaves which taper at the base to a very short petiole, never stem-clasping. There are two subspecies: subsp. aromaphloia (Greek aroma, smell and phloios, bark, refers to the supposed smell of the bark) has elliptical to oblong usually bluish green juvenile leaves and occurs from the eastern Grampians east to the Daylesford area and south to Anglesea subsp. sabulosa (Latin sabulosa, sandy, refers to the habitat) which occurs from the central Grampians west to the Little Desert and south-west to Cavendish and has linear, greener juvenile leaves. The two subspecies grade into each other. E. corticosa, a restricted endemic near Rylstone in central western New South Wales, is very close to subsp. sabulosa and differs only marginally by usually having smooth bark on the larger branches. USES Gums, fuel, honey. |
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