Callistemon

Shrubs or small trees; bark rough, dark and fissured to pale, smooth, peeling and papery; new growth villous, often suffused with pink. Leaves alternate, sessile to shortly petiolate, terete to lanceolate or oblanceolate, entire, sometimes prominently gland-dotted, apex acute, sometimes pungent. Inflorescence spike-like, oblong to cylindric; terminal at first then axis growing from a scaly bud at the tip into a leafy shoot. Flowers 5-merous, 1 per bract, bisexual; bracts mostly brown, scarious (sometimes leaf-like), soon shed, generally with 2 minute bracteoles, hypanthium urceolate to campanulate; sepals 5, more or less round, deciduous; petals 5, more or less round, exceeding the sepals, deciduous; stamens numerous, at least twice as long as petals, free or rarely shortly united at the base, white to yellow, green, pink, lilac or crimson, anthers versatile, yellow or dark purplish-black; ovary 3(–4)-celled, half-inferior; style with capitate stigma. Fruit a woody loculicidal capsule, 3(–4) valved, often persistent on the stem and enlarging for many years; seeds angular, numerous.