Yellow Box

Description:

Eucalyptus melliodora, commonly known as yellow box, honey box or yellow ironbark, is a species of medium-sized to occasionally tall tree that is endemic to south-eastern, continental Australia. It has rough, flaky or fibrous bark on part or all of the trunk, smooth greyish to yellowish bark above. The adult leaves are lance-shaped to egg-shaped, the flower buds are arranged in groups of seven and the fruit is more or less hemispherical. (Wikipedia) The wavy bark is so unusual, and the colours of the bark changed to a lovely golden hue towards late afternoon. The yellow inner bark is quite distinctive when cut. PS: A similar eucalypt species that is endemic to this area is E. tereticornis, aka forest red gum, blue gum or red irongum.... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eucalyptus... PPS: Many thanks to the good people at the Queensland Plant Identification group on Facebook, for their assistance to ID this spotting. There has been plenty of support for both species of eucalypt. I'll certainly have a much closer look at these trees next time I'm in the area.

Habitat:

Spotted along the shore of freshwater Lake Broadwater, which forms part of the Lake Broadwater Conservation Park.... https://parks.des.qld.gov.au/parks/lake-... This region is very flat, and Lake Broadwater is the only large, naturally-occurring freshwater lake on the Darling Downs. Dalby is the nearest town. NB: Just a little over 12 months ago and this lake was completely dry due to the massive drought that Australia experienced. It's wonderful to see how the lake and surrounding bushland has recovered. Birdlife was abundant.

Notes:

Notable specimens: One of the few trees to survive the blast from the 6 August 1945 atomic bombing of Hiroshima Japan, was an E. melliodora. The tree was located 740 m (2,430 ft) from the hypocenter, and as of April 2019 was still standing. (Wikipedia)