Trees

Eucalyptus spathulata: swamp mallet

With prompting from Claudette in the comments yesterday, I collected a sample piece of that tree which has the wonderful bark I featured in my previous post.

I spent hours trawling websites and – hurrah- identified it as a swamp mallet which is native to Western Australia and does well in poorly drained and saline soils..

Feature photo was taken with the Nokia Lumia 530 while walking the dog.

Then I put the piece on some cork board and photographed with the Nokia Lumia 520 in poor daylight. I was surprised to see different coloured clusters which had up to seven buds. From memory, the cream flowers were not at all showy. Some old fruit is left on the branch.

 

 

I discovered the difference between a mallee and a mallet tree – the former grows many trunks from a sort of tuber underneath the ground, and the latter grows from a single trunk. I bet Claudette could have told me what the tree was, just from the images! However, I did enjoy my jaunt around the web looking at all the lovely Australian natives.

Thanks for looking. 🙂

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6 thoughts on “Eucalyptus spathulata: swamp mallet”

  1. Thanks so much Christine for finding that out (I wouldn’t have know it without searching, but thought it would be some kind of Gum just by looking at the bark and shape of tree and leaves) I wonder if it would grow here in Tassie – the bark was absolutely beautiful, will have to investigate.

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    • It withstands light frosts to -5C and will tolerate droughts. Florabank.org.au gives growing parameters. Fire will kill it as it will not regenerate. Bees love it. I might try growing some from seed for my yard. Even when it hasn’t got the colourful show on, its limbs are so smooth that you want to touch them!

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