39 



E. Cambageana Maiden. 



A medium-sized tree, up to from 50 to 80 feet high, with long pendulous 



branches. Bark scaly up to 3 or 4 feet from the ground, hard and dark-coloured, 



hence the name " Blackbutt." The remainder of the stem and branches are smooth 



and white. Timber deep red or chocolate, said to resemble that of Red Box 



(E. folyanthemos). 



E. polyanthemos Schauer. 

 " Red Box " par excellence. Usually a medium-sized, scrambling tree, the 

 amount of " boxy " or scaly bark on the trunk varying. (See Part XLII, p. 58). 



E. MICROTHECA F.V.M. 



The description of no Eucalyptus bark has given me more trouble than this 

 species. 



The description of the original species says : " With a dirty brownish-white 

 bark full of wrinkles and cracks, persistent on the trunk, deciduous on the upper branches, 

 leaving them ashy white." 



Bentham (B.F1. iii, 223, 1866), in the well-known confusion with E. brachypoda 

 Turcz., referred to in Part XI, p. 51, of the present work, says : — 



A tall shrub or small or moderate sized tree, the bark varying from smooth and whitish to dark 

 and nigged, persistent or shed in large patches (Oldfield), dark and rough on the trunk, smooth, whitish 

 and deciduoxis on the blanches (F. Mueller). 



Mr. R. H. Cambage, in Joum. Roy. Soc. N.S.W., xlix, 433 (1915), refers to the 

 uncertainty in regard to the bark at some length. He rightly points out that the Bourke 

 (N.S.W.) tree has "smooth, perfectly white branches" and "brownish-red" timber. 

 The Gulf of Carpentaria tree is entirely covered with Box bark, but there are some 

 intermediate forms going northward from Bourke. The Gulf Coolabah has timber 

 of a shade darker than that of the Bourke tree. 



I have referred to the subject in Part XI, p. 53, of the present work, and also 

 in my " Forest Flora of New South Wales," Part LI, p. 20. 



Mr. W. V. Fitzgerald (MSS.) speaks of the Kimberley (North-west Australia) tree as "30-50 feet, 

 trunk to 25 feet, diameter 1-2 feet, branches often pendulous, bark persistent on stem and branches, dark 

 gray, rather thick, rough and longitudinally fissured, often of a fibrous texture, timber red, hard and 

 tough." This could also be taken as a description of the tree as we usually find it in eastern Australia, 

 but we have on the Murchison River (limestone and vicinity of fresh water) and also in tropical coastal 

 Western Australia, an undoubted white gum with a white-washed bark. The environments which have 

 brought about these changes have not yet been explained. Perhaps we have a second species. (Maiden 

 in Joum. R)y. Sx., N.S.W., LI, 453 (1917). 



Summarising, I think the position of the species is something like this : — 



A tree of medium or large size (up to 70 or 80 feet, with a diameter of 4 feet), 

 but generally much smaller, often more or less crooked, branches pendulous, and the 

 trunk, to a varying height, covered with a sub-fibrous, shaggy bark, to scaly or flaky 

 bark, the branches smooth and perfectly white. In tropical and sub-tropical Western 

 Australia we have the extreme form of the whole of the trunk being smooth and white. 



