Mallee Honey-myrtle: Trunk & Bark

Mallee Honey-myrtle (Melaleuca acuminata ssp acuminata)

Class:

Plants (Plantae) - Land Plants (Charophyta) - Land Plants (Equisetopsida)

Order:

Myrtles (Myrtales)

Family:

Myrtle (Myrtaceae) iNaturalist Observation

Species:

Mallee Honey-myrtle (Melaleuca acuminata ssp acuminata)

This Photo:

Trunk & Bark

Thank you Tony and Jenny Dominelli for confirming the id of this species for us

General Species Information:
Found on Ellura (in the Murray Mallee, SA) and elsewhere
Looks very similar to M. lanceolata. Up close they are quite different once you study them carefully:

Larger leaves (this is what we first noticed)
The leaves are oposite. Each pair of leaves is roughly 90 deg (at right angles) to the previous pair. But overall the leaves have a slight spin to them when looking down the branch. The M. lanceolata leaves are adjacent but still offset to each other in a pattern. As such, you can see 4 leaves in a whorl (acuminata) rather than 5 (lanceolata)
The leaves have dark spots under
The leaves are flat, rather than nearly cylindrical & succulent. Both are pointy with a longitudinal curve
Flowering in Spring instead of Autumn
We think the fruit falls off on the M. acuminata leaving spikes. It makes it appear this species doesn't fruit when found 10 months after fruiting.
The fruit, or seed pods, are more cylindricalThe flowers are randomly scattered, not in bottlebrushes

Buds are ~2mm wide, leaves ~2mm wide & ~6mm long

Similar Species: Dryland Tea-tree (Melaleuca lanceolata)

This species is classed as

LC (Least Concern)

in the Murray Mallee, SA, by DENR (Regional Species Status Assessments, July 2010)

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