Eucalyptus discreta
Eucalyptus discreta is a species of shrub or mallee that is endemic to Western Australia. It has smooth creamy brown and pale grey bark, narrow-lance-shaped adult leaves, flower buds in groups of seven or nine, creamy-white flowers and barrel-shaped fruit.
Description
Eucalyptus discreta is a shrub or mallee that typically grows to a height of and forms a lignotuber. The bark is smooth creamy brown and pale grey, often with coarse ribbons of loose bark toward the base of the stem. Young plants and coppice regrowth have dull green, linear to narrow oblong leaves that are long, wide and arranged in opposite pairs. Adult leaves are arranged alternately, the same shade of slightly glossy green on both sides, narrow lance-shaped to elliptic or curved, long, wide on a petiole long. The flower buds are borne in leaf axils on an unbranched peduncle long, the individual buds on a pedicel long. Mature buds are oval, long, wide, usually with a hemispherical operculum that is up to the same length as the floral cup. Flowering occurs between January and April and the flowers are creamy white. The fruit is a woody, shortly barrel-shaped fruit long and wide, with the valves at about the level of the rim.Taxonomy and naming
Eucalyptus discreta was first formally described by the botanist Ian Brooker in 1979 in the journal Brunonia. The type specimen was collected by Brooker in 1974 about east of Esperance and the specific epithet is a Latin word meaning "separated", referring to the arrangement of the juvenile leaves.This species is part of the Eucalyptus subgenus Symphyomyrtus in the section Bisectae and the subsection Destitutae. It is closely related to E. uncinata in which the juvenile leaves are joined at the base.