Plants of South Eastern New South Wales

Melia azedarach

Flowering branches. Photographer Don Wood, north of Milton

Fruit and leaves. Photographer Don Wood, Carnarvaon Station Bush Heritage Reserve via Augathella, Qld

Tree. Australian Plant Image Index, photographer Murray Fagg, near Cowra

Common name

White cedar, Chinaberry tree

Family

Meliaceae

Where found

Forest, vine scrubs, regrowth, and moist gullies. Native on the coast and ranges north of Bega. Often planted elsewhere.

Notes

Deciduous tree to 40 m tall. Fruit fleshy. Bark smooth, with prominent leaf scars and lenticels, becoming ridged and furrowed with age. Young stems hairy with unbranched and stellate hairs (needs a hand lens or a macro app on your phone/tablet to see), becoming hairless. Leaves alternating up the stems, compound, 12-80 cm long, mostly with 6-14 pinnae, each with 3-9 leaflets 2-10 cm long, 10-30 mm wide, tips pointed, surfaces hairless or with scattered stellate hairs, margins entire to toothed. Male and bisexual flowers on the same plant. Flowers fragrant, white to pink, mauve, or bluish, usually with 5-6 petals each 6-12 mm long, in branched clusters 10-22 cm long. Fruit yellow to yellow-brown when ripe, poisonous to humans, but not to birds. Flowers Spring.

Naturalised in Vic.

PlantNET description:  http://plantnet.rbgsyd.nsw.gov.au/cgi-bin/NSWfl.pl?page=nswfl&lvl=sp&name=Melia~azedarach (accessed 25 January, 2021)