#gum tree

AKA gum-topped stringybark, white-top and in Victoria as woollybutt.

First formally described in 1900 by Richard Thomas Baker from a specimen collected by William Baeuerlen, (previously known as Wilhelm Bäuerlen) on Mount Delegate, a distinctive peak in the Snowy Mountains near the border of NSW and Victoria.

A large eucalypt, sometimes reaching 90m in height, growing in SE Australia usually on slopes, in grassy or wet forest, in deep fertile soil. One of the two subspecies is endemic to Tasmania.

This particular individual, the Twisted Gum, is a landmark in Christchurch, and one of the largest trees in the Botanical Gardens. It was planted a bit of 100 years ago, but was misidentified as Eucalyptus gigantea (which is now Eucalyptus globulus anyway). In 2020 they replaced the lawn around it with deep mulch, and installed a wooden platform up to the base, to reduce the ill-effects soil compaction was having on the enormous tree.

Photo from Jan 2025 by Peter Shelton.

The twisted trunk is a common growth pattern in Eucalypts growing unsurrounded by other trees, as the torsion gives them extra resilance against strong wind.

AKA pricklybark or dwutta. First formally described by Ferdinand von Mueller in 1882, and named after Emil Todt, a botanical artist who drew some of the plates for Mueller's Atlas of Eucalypts. At least 14 other eucalypts have the common name Blackbutt, usually because they've survived bushfires that scorched the lower bark.

An often sprawling, slow-growing tree or mallee that may reach 15 m in height and forms a lignotuber. Young plants and coppice regrowth have sessile leaves that are elliptical to oblong and arranged in opposite pairs. Adult leaves are arranged alternately, light green, and lance-shaped. The abundant white-cream flowers appear in summer and early autumn.

Endemic to scrub and open woodland on sandy flats and gentle slopes on the coastal plain between Perth and Dongara.

AKA  colaille, gooloorto, koolert and moitch.

Described in 1837 by Austrian botanist, coin expert and Sinologist Stephan Friedrich Ladislaus Endlicher, based on specimens collected by Austrian nobleman, army officer, diplomat, botanist, and explorer Charles von Hügel. Hügel introduced many plants and flowers from New Holland (Australia) to Europe's public gardens.

A medium-sized eucalypt, endemic to the Perth area, commonly found in coastal wetlands and along watercourses, and rarely on granite rock. Spring foliage is very often infested with leaf miners, leaf blister sawflies like Phylacteophaga froggatti from the East Coast, and lerps.

North of Perth it hybridises with the River Red Gum Eucalyptus camaldulensis var. obtusa.

Formerly known as E. platypus var. heterophylla, until Australian botanists Ian Brooker and Stephen Hopper elevated it to its own species in 2002, based on specimens collected by Charles Austin Gardner near Hopetoun forty years earlier.

It grows to up to 15m tall, in a variety of coastal habitats from Perth south and east to Esperance, and a few scattered areas further east. Whether its growth form should be considered a mallee or a mallet is apparently the subject of ongoing debate, as there is disagreement on whether it grows a lignotuber or not - mallets don't.

- Tuart

'gomphocephala' means 'club-headed' and refers to the shape of the operculum on the flowerbud.

AKA tooart, moorun, mouarn or duart and white gum. The Perth suburbs White Gum Valley and Tuart Hill are named after it - not there's much Tuart woodland left in either. See below.

First scientifically described by Swiss botanist Augustin Pyramus de Candolle in 1828, from specimens collected at the Vasse River 26 years previously, by Jean-Baptiste Leschenault.

One of the six forest giant eucalypts of Australia's Southwest. It used to form a nearly continous strip of coastal woodland from the Perth region all the way to Busselton, until most were cut down for export or to make room for more building subdivisions. The timber is dense, hard, water resistant and resists splintering. Remaining trees are unfortunately prone to Phytophthora dieback, an often fatal infection.

It grows in deep sand and sandy well-drained soils, often over limestone. The oldest trees - over 400 years in age - can be 40m tall and 19m around. Trees of that size are now very very rare.

Tuarts have been introduced into the warmer parts of Europe, several countries in Africa, and has become naturalised in parts of southern Africa.

One of over 100 species named after James Drummond (1786? –1863), a naturalist and early European settler of Western Australia. At least one writer considers him the most succesful collector of WA plants from the period, and his personal collection became the nucleus of the Victorian Herbarium after his death.

This mallee eucalypt grows in lateritic soils, sometimes over granite, over a wide swath of the SW.