Eucalyptus pauciflora

A tree reaching 30 metres tall with a canopy spread to 5 or 10 metres. They can be found at a wide range of sizes in their habitats – sometimes forming a mallee; forming a lignotuber.

The bark is mostly smooth – mostly white with shades of cream / grey and yellow – sometimes with scribbles and looking much like a scribbly gum (which it can be found growing with in some locations).

It can be found commonly in NSW, scattered over all of the tablelands regions and virtually contained to those regions of NSW, from border to border. In Victoria, it spreads through most of the eastern half (absent in the far east) to the south-west. It extends in South Australia to Mt Gambier. It is common through the central parts of Tasmania. It only just gets into Queensland around the Stanthorpe region.

Snow Gum, as the name implies, is typically found in colder areas where snow might fall each year or every now and then. Usually on cold flats and above creeklines in “frost-hollows” as well as mountainous areas with higer snow fall. Outside of Kosciuszko, it occurs in the Southern Highlands, Orange and Oberon, to name just a few locations. It forms part of dry sclerophyll woodlands – on a range of soils.

Eucalyptus spp. have simple and usually alternate adult leaves with juvenile leaves starting off opposite to alternate (disjunct). In this species, the juvenile foliage / coppicing growth is alternate, blue-green to glaucous, to 17 cm long and 9 cm wide, broad-lanceolate to ovate or elliptical.

The adult leaves are disjunct, elliptic to lanceolate to falcate, to 20 cm long and to about 5 cm wide, mostly green and concolorous; very thick in texture and with very conspicuous / strong venation which aids enromously in the identification.

The primary inflorescence of “eucalypts” (Angophora / Corymbia / Eucalyptus) is an umbellaster (an umbel-like cluster of flowers). In the flowers of Corymbia and Eucalyptus, the petals and sepals are fused into the distinctive calyptra / operculum (bud cap) which is shed when the flower opens (in some species, 2 bud caps (opercula) are shed). The flowers are conspicuously staminate – where many stamens are basically taking over the role of the petals, all surrounding one central carpel. In this species, the flower buds are arranged in leaf axils in groups (umbellasters) of 9 to 15 (sometimes to 19). Mature buds are obovoid to 8 mm long and 5 mm wide with a rounded to conical operculum / calyptra – and lacking a calyptra scar (hence only one bud cap per flower). Flowering has been observed in most months of the year.

Eucalyptus produce a capsule (gum-nut) which house valves which open to release the seed. The fruits (capsules) of some boxes have a cylindrical to urceolate shape. In this species, the capsules are obconical to hemispherical, with the disc level of slightly descending, with 3 to 4 valves, near rim level or enclosed, to about 13 mm long by 11 mm wide.