Eucalyptus viminalis subsp. cygnetensis – Rough-barked Manna Gum

Description

Eucalyptus viminalis is a species of small to very tall tree, widespread in well-watered parts of south-eastern Australia from southern Eyre Peninsula and Kangaroo Island of South Australia through Victoria, Tasmania and eastern New South Wales as far north as the tablelands between Inverell and Deepwater extending east to the escarpment. It is recognised most easily by the many pairs of opposite, sessile, lanceolate, green juvenile leaves. The crown is usually ribbony and the bark is mostly smooth in mountain forms although many populations elsewhere have a black butt or rough bark over most of the trunk. It is related to E. rubida and E. dalrympleana, both of which have rounded, not narrowly lanceolate juvenile leaves. Another seven-budded form, occurring on the Northern Tablelands of New South Wales and its eastern escarpment, has been described recently as E. nobilis (q.v.).There are four subspecies: subsp. viminalis

Occurs mostly in wetter or seasonally well-watered areas in New South Wales, Victoria, Tasmania and South Australia, particularly in mountain valleys. Subsp. viminalis can be very tall (to 90 m in Tasmania) and is generally smooth-barked and three-budded. In South Australia it occurs only in the central part of the Mt Lofty Ranges. subsp. cygnetensis

Has rough bark usually to the larger limbs and “umbels of seven buds, infrequently less, to as few as three” (Boomsma, 1980, p. 295). Subsp. cygnetensis occurs from the Grampians in Victoria, south-west to Mt Gambier in South Australia, on Kangaroo Island, in the Port Lincoln area, and in the Mt Lofty Ranges where plants with mixtures of umbels in threes and sevens and form typical of subsp. viminalis also occur. Similar intermediates occur in the Grampians.