Eucalyptus ligustrina, commonly known as the privet-leaved stringybark,[1] is a species of shrub, mallee or small tree that is endemic to New South Wales. It has rough, stringy bark, lance-shaped to egg-shaped adult leaves, flower buds in groups of between seven and fifteen, white flowers and hemispherical or shortened spherical fruit.
Eucalyptus ligustrina is a small tree, often a mallee or a shrub, that sometimes grows to but usually to less than, and forms a lignotuber. The bark is rough, greyish brown and stringy on the trunk and larger branches, smooth on branches thinner than . Young plants and coppice regrowth have egg-shaped leaves long and wide with a very short petiole. Adult leaves are the same, or a slightly different, shade of glossy green on both sides, lance-shaped to curved or egg-shaped, long and wide tapering to a petiole long. The flower buds are arranged in groups of between seven and fifteen in leaf axils, on a peduncle long, the individual buds sessile. Mature buds are oval to club-shaped or spindle-shaped, long and wide with a conical to rounded operculum. Flowering has been recorded from April to May and from September to October and the flowers are white. The fruit is a woody, hemispherical or shortened spherical capsule long and wide with the valves below rim level.[2] [3] [4]
Eucalyptus ligustrina was first formally described in 1828 by the Swiss botanist Augustin Pyramus de Candolle in Prodromus Systematis Naturalis Regni Vegetabilis.[5] [6] The specific epithet (ligustrina) is a reference to the similarity of the leaves to those of plants in the genus Ligustrum.
Privet-leaved stringybark occurs in New South Wales from the Gibraltar Range National Park in the north to Deua National Park in the south. The principal area however, is in the Blue Mountains. The habitat is dry sclerophyll woodland or heathland, on poor soils derived from sandstone or acidic granite.