No. 186. 
Eucalyptus gigantea Hook. f. 
A Mountain Ash or Gum-topped Stringybark. 
(Family MYRTACE^E.) 
Botanical description. Genus, Eucalyptus. (See Part II, p. 33.) 
Botanical description. Species, E. gigantea Hook. f. in Lond. Journ. Hot. 
vi, 479 (1847). 
This is a species which has been the cause of much synonymy and 
uncertainty, because it was confused (and most pardonably so) by its original 
describer and subsequent botanists with E. obliqua L'He'rit. a species whose identity 
had not been made clear at the time. 
The original description may be translated as follows : 
Branches and JSranchlets smooth, elongated, slender. 
Leaves alternate, petiolate, ovate-lanceolate, obliquely curved and acuminate, very unequal at 
the base, and with a distinct midrib and spreading lateral veins. 
Pedicels many-flowered, elongated. 
Buds linear-clavate, obtuse. 
Calyx-tube pedicellate, obconical when in flower, with a short hemispherical, obtuse or nearly 
acute operculum, as broad as the calyx-tube. 
Fruits rather large, pedicellate, from obeonical-heinispherical to turbinate, somewhat contracted 
at the mouth or nearly globular and hardly contracted. " Stringybark " of the colonists. 
Tall tree 150 to 250 feet high and about 20 to 26 feet in diameter at the base. Branches 
and branchlets slender, elongated. Leaves 4 to 6 inches long and I to H inches broad. Bud narrow, 
elongated, twice or thrice longer than the cup. 
Hooker afterwards redescribed his species in the following words : 
(The first paragraph following is a translation of the Latin.) 
A gigantic tree with slender pendulous branches and large slender petiolate leaves, ovate lanceolate at 
the base and gradually acuminate, opaque, much unequal at the base, and with a distinct midrib and spreading 
veins, with elongated many-flowered pedicels (peduncles) with nearly clavate pedicellate calyces, with a 
short, hemispherical, obtuse or rather acute operculum, with a pedicellate rather large capsule, turbinate, 
obconical, hemispherical or subglobos, woody, somewhat contracted at the mouth, flat or abruptly 
depressed inside, with included valves. (Gunn, 1095, 1104, 1106, 1965, 1966.) (Tab. XXVIII.) 
Tlii.s forms a gigantic tree, specimens having been felled in the valleys at the base of Mount 
Wellington, 300 feet high and 100 feet in girth, of which a full account is given in the " Proceedings of 
the Royal Society of Tasmania." It is also a most abundant species, and forms (he bulk of the forests of 
the elevated tableland of the interior and flanks of the southern mountains. Tt is difficult so to define its 
