Corymbia dallachiana commonly known as Dallachy's ghost gum[1] or Dallachy's gum,[2] is a species of tree that is endemic to Queensland. It has smooth bark, lance-shaped or curved adult leaves, flower buds usually in groups of three, white flowers and cup-shaped, cylindrical or barrel-shaped fruit.
Corymbia dallachiana is a tree that typically grows to a height of, sometimes more, and forms a lignotuber. It has smooth white to cream-coloured and pinkish bark that is shed in thin patches. Sometimes there is a short stocking of rough grey bark at the base of the trunk. Young plants and coppice regrowth have leathery elliptical, later egg-shaped to lance-shaped leaves that are long, wide and petiolate. Adult leaves are the same shade of green on both sides, lance-shaped or curved, long and wide, tapering to a petiole long. The flower buds are arranged in leaf axils on a branched peduncle up to long, each branch of the peduncle usually with three buds on pedicels long. Mature buds are pear-shaped, long and wide with a rounded operculum. Flowering has been observed in November and December and the flowers are white. The fruit is a woody cup-shaped, cylindrical or barrel-shaped capsule long and wide with the valves enclosed in the fruit or at rim level.[3] [4]
Dallachy's ghost gum was first formally described in 1867 by George Bentham, who gave it the name Eucalyptus tessellaris var. dallachiana and published the description in Flora Australiensis.[5] [6] In 1995 Kenneth Hill and Lawrence Alexander Sidney Johnson raised the variety to species status as Corymbia dallachiana in the journal Telopea.[7] The specific epithet dallachiana honours John Dallachy.
Corymbia dallachiana grows in grassy woodland on plains and on creek levees east of a line from Coen to Jericho and south from Bathurst Bay to Rockhampton and Emerald.[8]
This eucalypt is classified as of "least concern" under the Queensland Government Nature Conservation Act 1992.[9]