''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 Endemism is the state of a species being found in a single defined geographic location, such as an island, state, nation, country or other defined zone; organisms that are indigenous to a place are not endemic to it if they are also found els ...

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.

Description

''Eucalyptus melliodora'' is a tree that typically grows to a height of and forms a lignotuber. The bark is variable ranging from smooth with an irregular, short stocking, to covering most of the trunk, fibrous, dense or loosely held, grey, yellow or red-brown, occasionally very coarse, thick, dark brown to black. The smooth bark above is shed from the upper limbs to leave a smooth, white or yellowish surface. Young plants and

coppice Coppicing is a traditional method of woodland management which exploits the capacity of many species of trees to put out new shoots from their stump or roots if cut down. In a coppiced wood, which is called a copse, young tree stems are repea ...

regrowth have lance-shaped to elliptic leaves that are long and wide and

petiolate Petiole may refer to: *Petiole (botany), the stalk of a leaf, attaching the blade to the stem *Petiole (insect anatomy) In entomology, petiole is the technical term for the narrow waist of some hymenopteran insects, especially ants, bees, a ...

. Adult leaves are the same dull light green or slate grey on both surfaces, lance-shaped to egg-shaped, long and wide on a petiole long. The vein on the leaf margin of both adult and juvenile leaves is markedly distant from the leaf margin. The flower buds are arranged in groups of seven on an unbranched

peduncle Peduncle may refer to: *Peduncle (botany), a stalk supporting an inflorescence, which is the part of the shoot of seed plants where flowers are formed *Peduncle (anatomy), a stem, through which a mass of tissue is attached to a body **Peduncle (art ...

long, the individual buds on

pedicels In botany, a pedicel is a stem that attaches a single flower to the inflorescence. Such inflorescences are described as ''pedicellate''. Description Pedicel refers to a structure connecting a single flower to its inflorescence. In the absenc ...

long. Mature buds are club-shaped, oval or diamond-shaped, long and wide with a conical to rounded operculum. Flowering has been recorded in most months and the flowers are white. The fruit is a woody, hemispherical to shortened spherical capsule long and wide with the fruit near or below rim level.

Taxonomy

''Eucalyptus melliodora'' was first formally described in 1843 by

Johannes Conrad Schauer Johannes Conrad Schauer (16 February 1813 – 24 October 1848) was a botanist interested in Spermatophytes. He was born in Frankfurt am Main and attended the gymnasium of Mainz from 1825 to 1837. For the next three years he worked at the Hofgar ...

from an unpublished description by Allan Cunningham and the description was published in Walper's book ''Repertorium Botanices Systematicae''. The

specific epithet In taxonomy, binomial nomenclature ("two-term naming system"), also called nomenclature ("two-name naming system") or binary nomenclature, is a formal system of naming species of living things by giving each a name composed of two parts, bot ...

(''melliodora'') is derived from the Latin words ''melleus'' meaning "honey" and ''odorus'' "scented".

Distribution and habitat

Yellow box is widely distributed on the eastern plains and tablelands from western Victoria,

New South Wales ) , nickname = , image_map = New South Wales in Australia.svg , map_caption = Location of New South Wales in AustraliaCoordinates: , subdivision_type = Country , subdivision_name = Australia , established_title = Before federation , es ...

and up from the capital territory to south-central

Queensland ) , nickname = Sunshine State , image_map = Queensland in Australia.svg , map_caption = Location of Queensland in Australia , subdivision_type = Country , subdivision_name = Australia , established_title = Before federation , established_ ...

Ecology

It is associated with inland grey box, fuzzy box ('' E. conica''), white box ('' E. albens''), pilliga grey box ('' E. pilligaensis''), red ironbark ('' E. sideroxylon''), narrow-leaved ironbark ('' E. crebra''), Blakely's red gum ('' E. blakelyi''), apple species (''

Angophora ''Angophora'' is a genus of nine species of trees and shrubs in the myrtle family, Myrtaceae. Endemic to eastern Australia, they differ from other eucalypts in having juvenile and adult leaves arranged in opposite pairs, sepals reduced to project ...

''), black cypress ('' Callitris endlicheri''), white cypress (''

Callitris glaucophylla ''Callitris'' is a genus of coniferous trees in the Cupressaceae (cypress family). There are 16 recognized species in the genus, of which 13 are native to Australia and the other three (''C. neocaledonica, C. sulcata'' and ''C. p ...

''), kurrajong (''

Brachychiton populneus ''Brachychiton populneus'', commonly known as the kurrajong, is a small to medium-sized tree found naturally in Australia in a diversity of habitats from wetter coastal districts to semi-arid interiors of Victoria, New South Wales and Queen ...

'') and wattles (''

Acacia ''Acacia'', commonly known as the wattles or acacias, is a large genus of shrubs and trees in the subfamily Mimosoideae of the pea family Fabaceae. Initially, it comprised a group of plant species native to Africa and Australasia. The genus n ...

'') species.

Uses

''Eucalyptus melliodora'' provides good firewood and hard, strong, durable timber. The honey produced from it is renowned for its quality.

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 from the hypocenter, and as of April 2019 was still standing.

Gallery

File:Eucalyptus melliodora 1.jpg, ''E. melliodora'' in

Wagga Wagga Wagga Wagga (; informally called Wagga) is a major regional city in the Riverina region of New South Wales, Australia. Straddling the Murrumbidgee River, with an urban population of more than 56,000 as of June 2018, Wagga Wagga is the state's ...

Image:Yellow Box leaf.jpg, leaf File:Yellow Box leaves.jpg, leaves Image:Yellow Box blossoms and gumnuts.jpg, flowers and flower buds Image:Eucalyptus melliodora fruit.jpg, fruit File:Yellow Box trunk444.jpg, trunk detail File:Yellow Box flowers against leaves.jpg, flowers