Description:

• Trees, shrubs or mallees; bark smooth, fibrous, stringy or tessellate
• Leaves: plants heterophyllous, i.e. seedling, juvenile, intermediate and adult phases occurring in most species, the latter phases sometimes not achieved; adult leaves glabrous, mostly alternate, usually petiolate, lanceolate, often falcate, pendulous, rarely erect, with a distinct midvein, penninerved or with parallel veins
• Flowers in conflorescences usually of umbel-like condensed dichasia, usually pedunculate, single or rarely paired in leaf axils, or in terminal sometimes corymbose panicles; flowers 3 or more per umbel, rarely single, sessile or pedicellate, sometimes male only
• Calyx and corolla each or together forming an operculum that is shed at anthesis; sepals sometimes free, falling separately or together
• Disc convex, flat or descending
• Stamens many, usually on a staminophore; anther connective usually bearing a gland on back or at apex
• Ovary 2-7-locular, inferior or partly superior; ovules many; ovulodes usually present
• Fruit a capsule with a usually woody hypanthium, loculicidal, rarely circumscissile, with scars of operculum and staminophore at rim; valves exserted, level with rim or included
• Seeds several to many, variously shaped and coloured
• x = 11 (10, 12, 14) (polyploidy)

Nomenclature:

• *Eucalyptus L'Hér.
  • L'Héritier: 18 (1788)
  • Adamson: 605 (1950)
  • Brice-Bruce: 6 (1979)
  • Brooker & Kleinig: 4 (1983)
  • Chippendale: 1 (1988)

Distribution & Notes:

• Global: Species 600, mostly Australian but some extending into Indonesia
• Southern Africa: Some 320 species have been cultivated in the region and ± 6 occur as escapes