Eucalyptus strzeleckii
Rule Strzelecki GumTree to 40 m tall; bark smooth, whitish with red-brown mottling, usually with a short stocking of loose, semi-persistent rough bark. Juvenile leaves petiolate, soon alternate, lanceolate to ovate or elliptic, subcrenulate, to 8 cm long, 4 cm wide, discolorous, somewhat glossy, green or yellow-green, glandular; adult leaves petiolate, alternate, ovate to lanceolate, to 20 cm long, 3 cm wide, concolorous, glossy, green; new growth glaucous; reticulation dense, with numerous island and intersectional oil glands. Inflorescence axillary, unbranched, peduncle to 1.4 cm long, 7-flowered; buds pedicellate, diamond-shaped to slightly ovoid, to 0.8 cm long, 0.5 cm diam., scar present; operculum shortly beaked; stamens inflexed; ovules in 4 vertical rows; flowers white. Fruit pedicellate, obconical, to 0.6 cm long, 0.8 cm diam.; disc level to raised-annual; valves 3 or 4, rim level or slightly exserted; seed black, flattened-ellipsoid, usually somewhat cuneate, slightly lacunose, very shallowly reticulate, hilum ventral. Flowers spring.
GipP, OtP, HSF, OtR, Strz. Largely restricted to the western section of the Strzelecki Range, from Neerim South in the north, south to Foster, and with a few isolated records from the Otway ranges. Favours ridges, slopes and streambanks and deep fertile soils.
Differs from Eucalyptus brookeriana most strikingly in the glaucous new leaf growth on the outside of the crown and to a lesser extent in the smaller buds and fruit and looser rough bark towards the base of the trunk, and in the flowering season.
Records from western Victoria are unusually disjunct, and while apparently well placed in E. strzeleckii, further investigation into the affinities of these plants with E. brookeriana may be warranted.
Brooker, M.I.H.; Slee, A.V. (1996). Eucalyptus. In: Walsh, N.G.; Entwisle, T.J., Flora of Victoria Vol. 3, Dicotyledons Winteraceae to Myrtaceae, pp. 946–1009. Inkata Press, Melbourne.
Spinning