Moreton Bay Ash

Description:

An easily-identifiable and eye-catching species, "Moreton Bay ash", aka carbeen, carbeen bloodwood and blackbutt, is a ghost gum tree of the family Myrtaceae, and is an Australian native. Height ranging from small to 35 metres tall, forming a lignotuber. Its bark is rough on the lower part of the trunk (1–4 m) and looks like a stocking, is tessellated, dark grey to black, abruptly changing to a very pale grey or creamy-white smooth bark, although sometimes powdery. Name from Latin: tessellaris - tessellated, referring to the rough bark in small squares. Not to be confused with Eucalyptus pilularis, also known as blackbutt. NB: I've place the images of the bark first with this spotting simply because it's one of the most obvious features of this species. The dark "stocking" of tessellated bark is really quite striking.

Habitat:

Spotted at Lake Wivenhoe Dam, to the west of Brisbane. Grows in open forest, dry sclerophyll forest, beach forest, and on rainforest margins. Withstands strong winds, heat and drought, and tolerates a moderate amount of salt spray. Ranges from Cape York Peninsula in FNQ, southward to northern NSW, and also occurs in New Guinea. Although this spotting was located in a park, the species thrives in the surround bushland around the lake, and I saw many individual trees.

Notes:

Apart from the distinctive bark, one thing I noticed about this spotting was the tree sap oozing from the trunk (photo #3). The basal bark is very thick, and perhaps similar to the bark of the northern grey ironbark (Eucalyptus siderophloia) https://www.projectnoah.org/spottings/28... which is impregnated with "kino", a dark sap that protects the tree during fires. The sap and thick tessellated bark of this spotting of Moreton Bay ash may serve the same purpose, and falls off in squares after fire.