Corymbia citriodora is a tall
treeA tree is a perennial woody plant. It is most often defined as a woody plant that has many secondary branches supported clear of the ground on a single main stem or trunk with clear apical dominance. A minimum height specification at maturity is cited by some authors, varying from 3 m to...
, to 51 metres in height, from
temperateIn geography, temperate or tepid latitudes of the globe lie between the tropics and the polar circles. The changes in these regions between summer and winter are generally relatively moderate, rather than extreme hot or cold...
and
tropicalThe tropics is a region of the Earth surrounding the Equator. It is limited in latitude by the Tropic of Cancer in the northern hemisphere at approximately N and the Tropic of Capricorn in the southern hemisphere at S; these latitudes correspond to the axial tilt of the Earth...
north eastern
AustraliaAustralia , officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the Southern Hemisphere comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. It is the world's sixth-largest country by total area...
. It is also known as
lemon-scented gum,
blue spotted gum and
lemon eucalyptus.
Corymbia citriodora is a tall
treeA tree is a perennial woody plant. It is most often defined as a woody plant that has many secondary branches supported clear of the ground on a single main stem or trunk with clear apical dominance. A minimum height specification at maturity is cited by some authors, varying from 3 m to...
, to 51 metres in height, from
temperateIn geography, temperate or tepid latitudes of the globe lie between the tropics and the polar circles. The changes in these regions between summer and winter are generally relatively moderate, rather than extreme hot or cold...
and
tropicalThe tropics is a region of the Earth surrounding the Equator. It is limited in latitude by the Tropic of Cancer in the northern hemisphere at approximately N and the Tropic of Capricorn in the southern hemisphere at S; these latitudes correspond to the axial tilt of the Earth...
north eastern
AustraliaAustralia , officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the Southern Hemisphere comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. It is the world's sixth-largest country by total area...
. It is also known as
lemon-scented gum,
blue spotted gum and
lemon eucalyptus.
Corymbia citriodora has smooth, pale, uniform or slightly mottled
barkBark is the outermost layers of stems and roots of woody plants. Plants with bark include trees, woody vines and shrubs. Bark refers to all the tissues outside of the vascular cambium and is a nontechnical term. It overlays the wood and consists of the inner bark and the outer bark. The inner...
, white to coppery in summer, and a conspicuously narrow-leaved
crownThe crown of a plant refers to the totality of the plant's aboveground parts, including stems, leaves, and reproductive structures. A plant canopy consists of one or more plant crowns growing in a given area....
which smells strongly of
lemonThe lemon is both a small evergreen tree native to Asia, and the tree's ellipsoidal yellow fruit. The fruit is used for culinary and non-culinary purposes throughout the world – primarily for its juice, though the pulp and rind are also used, mainly in cooking and baking...
s.
PearThe pear is any of several tree species of genus Pyrus and also the name of the pomaceous fruit of these trees. Several species of pear are valued by humans for their edible fruit, but the fruit of other species is small, hard, and astringent....
-shaped
budIn botany, a bud is an undeveloped or embryonic shoot and normally occurs in the axil of a leaf or at the tip of the stem. Once formed, a bud may remain for some time in a dormant condition, or it may form a shoot immediately. Buds may be specialized to develop flowers or short shoots, or may have...
s are borne in clusters of three, formed in the corner of leaf and stem junctions, whilst
fruitIn broad terms, a fruit is a structure of a plant that contains its seeds.The term has different meanings dependent on context. In non-technical usage, such as food preparation, fruit normally means the fleshy seed-associated structures of certain plants that are sweet and edible in the raw state,...
(capsules) are
urnAn urn is a vase, ordinarily covered, that usually has a narrowed neck above a footed pedestal. "Knife urns" placed on pedestals flanking a dining-room sideboard were an English innovation for high-style dining rooms of the late 1760s...
-shaped. The bark is smooth for the entire height of the tree, often powdery, shedding in thin curling flakes.
It prefers lighter, slightly acidic
loamLoam is soil composed of sand, silt, and clay in relatively even concentration . Loam soils generally contain more nutrients and humus than sandy soils, have better infiltration and drainage than silty soils, and are easier to till than clay soils...
y soils and occurs in dry
sclerophyllSclerophyll is the term for a type of vegetation that has hard leaves and short internodes . The word comes from the Greek sclero and phyllon ....
forest and woodlands in hilly country.
Corymbia citriodora has a
lignotuberA lignotuber is a starchy swelling of the root crown possessed by some plants as a protection against destruction of the plant stem by fire. The crown contains buds from which new stems may sprout, and a sufficient store of nutrients to support a period of growth in the absence of...
.
FlowerA flower, sometimes known as a bloom or blossom, is the reproductive structure found in flowering plants . The biological function of a flower is to effect reproduction, usually by providing a mechanism for the union of sperm with eggs...
ing has been recorded in January, April, May, June, July, August, October and December.
Plants of
C. citriodora are
naturalisedNaturalization is the acquisition of citizenship and nationality by somebody who was not a citizen of that country at the time of birth....
in the
Darling RangeThe Darling Scarp, also referred to as the Darling Range or Darling Ranges, is a low escarpment running north-south to the east of the Swan Coastal Plain and Perth, Western Australia...
near
MundaringMundaring is a suburb located 34 km east of Perth on the Great Eastern Highway. The suburb is located within the Shire of Mundaring.The Aboriginal name of the area 'Mindah-lung', said to mean 'a high place on a high place', was anglicised to become 'Mundaring'.The Mundaring area is also considered...
,
Western AustraliaWestern Australia is a state of Australia, occupying the entire western third of the Australian continent. It is bounded by the Indian Ocean to the north and west, the Great Australian Bight and Indian Ocean to the south, the Northern Territory to the north-east and South Australia to the south-east...
and by planting to suburban
New South WalesNew South Wales is a state of :Australia, located in the east of the country. It is bordered by Queensland, Victoria and South Australia to the north, south and west respectively. To the east, the state is bordered by the Tasman Sea, which forms part of the Pacific Ocean. New South Wales...
and
VictoriaVictoria is the second most populous state in Australia. Geographically the smallest mainland state, Victoria is bordered by New South Wales, South Australia, and Tasmania on Boundary Islet to the north, west and south respectively....
.
Kings ParkKings Park is a park located on the western edge of Perth, Western Australia central business district. The park is a mixture of grassed parkland, botanical gardens and natural bushland on Mount Eliza with two thirds of the grounds conserved as native bushland. With panoramic views of the Swan...
in
PerthPerth is the capital and largest city of the Australian state of Western Australia and the fourth most populous city in Australia. The Perth metropolitan area has an estimated population of almost 1,700,000....
has a famous, beautiful avenue of this species planted many years ago, but it has spread to become a serious
weedA weed in a general sense is a plant that is considered by the user of the term to be a nuisance, and normally applied to unwanted plants in human-controlled settings, especially farm fields and gardens, but also lawns, parks, woods, and other areas. More specifically, the term is often used to...
there also.
Corymbia citriodora is an important forest tree, in demand for structural timber and for
honeyHoney is a sweet food made by bees using nectar from flowers. The variety produced by honey bees is the one most commonly referred to and is the type of honey collected by beekeepers and consumed by humans...
production. It also is popular in horticulture both within Australia and overseas. The name
Corymbia citriodora comes from the
LatinLatin is an Italic language originally spoken in Latium and Ancient Rome. It, along with most European languages, is a descendant of the ancient Proto-Indo-European language. Although it is considered a dead language, a number of scholars and members of the Christian clergy speak it fluently, and...
citriodorus, which means
lemon-scented.
The
essential oilAn essential oil is a concentrated hydrophobic liquid containing volatile aroma compounds from plants. Essential oils are also known as volatile oils, ethereal oils or aetherolea, or simply as the "oil of" the plant from which they were extracted, such as oil of clove...
of the lemon-scented gum mainly consists of
citronellalCitronellal or rhodinal or 3,7-dimethyloct-6-en-1-al is a monoterpenoid, the main component in the mixture of terpenoid chemical compounds that give citronella oil its distinctive lemon scent....
(80%), produced largely in Brazil and China. While unrefined oil from the lemon eucalyptus tree is used in perfumery, a refined form of this oil is used in
insect repellentAn insect repellent is a substance applied to skin, clothing, or other surfaces which discourages insects from landing or climbing on that surface. There are also insect repellent products available based on sound production, particularly ultrasound...
s. The refined oil's citronellal content is turned into cis- and trans- isomers of
p-menthane-3,8-diolp-Menthane-3,8-diol, also known as para-menthane-3,8-diol, PMD, or Menthoglycol, is an active ingredient used in insect repellents. It smells similar to menthol and acts as a coolant. PMD is found in very small quantities in the essential oil within leaves of the Eucalyptus citriodora tree...
s (PMD), a process which occurs naturally as the eucalyptus leaves age.
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