Manna gum

Eucalyptus mannifera, the brittle gum or red-spotted gum, is an evergreen tree in the myrtle family (Myrtaceae) that typically grows 20 to 25 meters tall and forms a lignotuber. The trunk and main limbs are clothed in smooth, powdery, white or pale grey bark sometimes flushed with red patches, that is shed in short ribbons, flakes, or plates to reveal a fresh cream or pinkish under-surface. Juvenile leaves are linear to lance-shaped or slightly curved, 40 to 100 millimeters long; mature leaves are alternate, lanceolate to curved, the same dull green on both surfaces, 70 to 185 millimeters long and 10 to 30 millimeters wide, on slender petioles. The flower buds are arranged in leaf axils in groups of seven on a short slender peduncle and open between January and May to small white flowers with many spreading stamens; the species occasionally exudes a sweet manna-like resin from wounds in the bark, the origin of both its specific epithet and the common name manna gum. The fruit is a small woody cup-shaped, hemispherical or conical capsule 3 to 5 millimeters long and 4 to 7 millimeters wide. The species is widespread on shallow rocky soils in eucalypt forest and woodland of south-eastern New South Wales and eastern Victoria.