Posted by talford on 7/30/2007, 6:41 pm I have no digital camera to take pictures, otherwise Gus could probably help ID this mystery EUC. with pictures of leaves,buds,bark and form. Now, 6 mm is nothing by California or Australia standards, but remember, I'm talking about the extreme hot/humid U.S. Gulf Coast, a place where I haven't found any euc flowers larger than Camaldulensis.By way of comparison, the Camaldulensis (I think that's what they were) buds I picked today ranged from 2 mm to 4 mm, and these larger buds appear easily twice their size. If I use the pics of E. sideroxylon 'Rosea' in the previous post by Gus,It looks like those (sideroxylon) buds are about 10 mm in diameter. The sideroxylon buds are wine-glass shaped, that is , they taper rapidly from the bud to a slender thread-like stalk. By comparison, the buds on my mystery euc, have very little taper, instead, their stalk thickness is almost the same as the bud diameter and are slightly triangular in shape , giving the 7 flower clusters a thick, finger-spike appearance.Unlike Corymbia ficifolia bud caps (http://davesgarden.com/pf/go/48965/)which have a rounded appearance with no sharp outline around the cap, the buds on the mystery euc have a very sharp line around the cap, and have a long sharp point on the cap, and a red colored ring around the base of the cap. I want to add that the leaf form of this mystery euc is very similar to C. ficifolia - deep green, thick leaves, very fat or wide as compared to the long ,slender, light lime green leaves of the Camaldulensis.Most of these leaves were about 20 centimeters long and 6 centimeters at their widest, but I saw many of these huge, deep green leaves more than 30 centimeters long and very broad - 12 centimeters.The long stem tips were red and almost rectangular - this may be common in many eucs and corymbias. There were about a dozen of these mystery eucs ranging from 3 meter tall seedlings, to 5 year old trees (a guess) 7 meters tall with trunks close to 30 centimeters. The bark was completely different from Camaldulensis. The bark had a redish hue, and was fine,flat,interlocking texture - no peeling or flaking bark here. The camaldulensis trees have a great big bean pole appearance, with many , small branches sticking out of the smooth white trunk, giving the whole tree a columnar appearance with long,downward cascading branches looking like long strings of leaves.The mystery euc had a rounded tree form, casting deep shade, with big thick branches, and no cascading foliage. there were about 4 species of eucs on this 10 acre sight in southeast Houston. Other than the camaldulensis, I couldn't begin to ID these others. For sure, they are completely different than the usual E. robusta and camaldulensis I see around Houston.There is a 'for sale' sign out front and I'll bet shortly that the whole place is buldozed down to make way for housing which is springing up all around this property.And at that point, I'll never know what the large flowering euc was.There were a dozen or so species of palms planted in there, surrounding a quarter acre lake . There were rare plants of many kinds, including large bamboos, casias, bauhinias, etc. I met the previous owner briefly a couple of years back, and found him to be a plant collector. I didn't know enough then to question him as to the ID of the eucs. Today, I called the most knowledgeable man about eucs in the area that I know of - used to give talks on eucs out at Mercer Arboretum. He also had met this plant collector. I asked him if he could get me in touch with this collector, but he couldn't and he was reluctant to help me ID these flowering eucs, due to reasons of health. It's a shame because there is no one else that is going to plant a collection of eucs like that . And soon the eucs with the biggest flowers in Houston will be gone without any knowlege of what kind they were. Tom in Pearland (Houston), Tx., Z9a.
98.194.26.53
6 millimeters is the diameter of the flower bud at it's widest point , just below the 'cap'. There weren't any opened flowers yet, so I can't say this is as big as these buds get. I'm giving the measurement in mm because that's the measure in botanic literature.
