Tree to about 20 m or more tall.Older trees often leaning and with massive, twisted branches. Bark smooth throughout. Juvenile leaves ovate to broadly lanceolate. Adult leaves lanceolate to narrow-lanceolate; blade mostly 10-30 cm long, 1-2 cm wide, dull. Leaf stalk 12-15 mm long. Flower clusters with mostly 7-11 flowers, cluster stalk cylindrical or quadrangular, 6-15 mm long, flower stalks 6-12 mm long, bud caps narrowed to a sharp, beaked point. Fruits hemispherical to ovoid; disk broad.Valves mostly 4, projecting; seeds yellow.
A very variable species throughout its range across Australia, varying in the colour of both juvenile and adult leaves, shape of the operculum and associated staminal flexion, and in its ability to survive in a variety of well-watered and seasonally arid sites. McDonald et al. (2009) recognised seven subspecies.
It is the most widely planted eucalypt outside Australia.
Cloning by tissue culture has successfully produced plants that are faster growing, more salt-tolerant, and more uniform than average plants from a range of sites.
Grows naturally near watercourses and in open forest and woodland.
Australia (all States except Tasmania).
A good source of honey.
Dull leaves; beaked flower cap; fruit with 4 projecting valves; yellow seed.
VIC: Balwyn (Maranoa Gds); Barmah (State Forest, Australia's finest natural stand); Bundoora (Park); Burnley (College - 22 m in 1989, circumference at breast height 3.35 m, native); Guildford (known locally as the 'Big Tree' or 'Guildford Gum'); Kew (Victoria Park, several old specimens); Koondruk (Gunbower Island, the Eagle Tree, largest tree of the species in the state, 52 m tall with circumference of 9 m, contained a Sea Eagle nest in 1995); Royal Bot. Gds ('Separation Tree', commemorating the separation of the Colony of Victoria from the Colony of New South Wales in 1851 - it has a spike driven into the back in 1890 showing the height of the exceptional flood of that year before the Yarra was diverted around the Gds; 'Lions Head Tree', a deformed tree nearby. Both trees are remnants of natural vegetation before settlement and the establishment of the Gds); St Kilda Junction ('Corroboree Tree'). NSW: Murray River ('Hovell Tree'. A tree near Albury over 200 years old, marked 'Hovell Nov 17/24' by explorer, William Hovell, near his 1824 campsite - the tree now cloned by CSIRO). SA: Flinders Ranges ('Cazneaux Tree', Blinman Rd N of Wilpena Pound. Photograph of tree by Harold Cazneaux in 1937 called 'The Spirit of Endurance' gained international recognition).
Spencer (1996); McDonald et al. (2009).
Source: (2002). Eucalyptus. In: . Horticultural Flora of South-eastern Australia. Volume 3. Flowering plants. Dicotyledons. Part 2. The identification of garden and cultivated plants. University of New South Wales Press.