Plants of South Eastern New South Wales

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Eucalyptus nicholii

Common name

Narrow-leaved Black Peppermint, Willow Peppermint

Family

Myrtaceae

Where found

Roadsides, gardens, and disturbed sites.  Planted as urban trees, windbreaks and corridors.  Sydney area.  Naturally occurs in grassy woodland, north from west of Port Macquarie.

Notes

Introduced tree to 20 m tall.  Bark rough on the trunk and larger branches or throughout, thick, shortly fibrous, grey to grey-brown, longitudinally furrowed.  Smooth bark shedding in short ribbons.  Juvenile stems rounded in cross section.  Juvenile leaves stalkless to shortly stalked, opposite each other for 5 or 6 pairs, then almost opposite each other to alternating up the stems, 2–6.5 cm long, 2–10 mm wide, dull, grey-green.  Adult leaves with a strong peppermint smell when rubbed, alternating up the stems, 6–14 cm long, 5–12 mm wide, usually dull, greenish grey.  Flowers white, with 0 petals. Flower clusters 7-flowered.  Mature flower buds 3-5 mm long, caps shorter than to as long as the base.  Flowers autumn.  Gumnuts 3-5 mm in diameter. Gumnuts that have dropped their seed have slightly protruding or protruding valves.

Vulnerable Australia. Vulnerable NSW. Provisions of the Biodiversity Conservation Act 2016 No 63 relating to the protection of protected plants generally also apply to plants that are a threatened species.

NSW Threatened Species profile:  http://www.environment.nsw.gov.au/threatenedSpeciesApp/profile.aspx?id=10302 (accessed 5 January 2021)

PlantNET description:  http://plantnet.rbgsyd.nsw.gov.au/cgi-bin/NSWfl.pl?page=nswfl&lvl=sp&name=Eucalyptus~nicholii  (accessed 5 January 2021)

EUCLID description:  https://apps.lucidcentral.org/euclid/text/entities/eucalyptus_nicholii.htm  (accessed 5 January 2021)