Eucalyptus creta, commonly known as the large-fruited gimlet,[1] is a species of mallet or tree that is endemic to Western Australia. It has smooth, shiny bark, lance-shaped adult leaves, flower buds in groups of three in leaf axils, relatively large white to creamy yellow flowers, and broadly hemispherical to bell-shaped fruit.
Eucalyptus creta is a mallet or tree that typically grows to a height of but does not form a lignotuber. It has smooth, shiny, yellowish, greenish or brownish to copper-coloured bark. Adult leaves are narrow lance-shaped, the same glossy green on both sides, long and wide on a petiole long. The flower buds are arranged in groups of three in leaf axils on a peduncle long, the individual buds sessile. Mature buds are oval, long and wide with a wing on two sides of the floral cup and a beaked operculum. Flowering occurs in May and the flowers are white to creamy yellow. The fruit is a woody, hemispherical to shallow cup-shaped capsule with two wings along the sides and the valves at the same level as the rim or extended beyond it.[2] [3]
Eucalyptus creta was first formally described in 1991 by Lawrie Johnson and Ken Hill from a specimen collected north of Mount Ney, north-east of Esperance.[4] The specific epithet (creta) is a Latin word meaning "grow" or "increase",[5] "referring to the buds, flowers and fruit".
Large-fruited gimlet is locally common in a restricted area north-east of Esperance in the Esperance Plains and Mallee biogeographic regions, where it grows on calcareous plains in sandy loam or clay with little understorey vegetation.[3]
This eucalypt is classified as "Priority Three" by the Government of Western Australia Department of Parks and Wildlife meaning that it is poorly known and known from only a few locations but is not under imminent threat.[6]