Red-box

Eucalyptus polyanthemos, the red box, is a small to medium-sized evergreen tree in the Myrtaceae endemic to dry, often rocky woodland on the western slopes and tablelands of New South Wales and Victoria, Australia. Trees grow 10 to 25 metres tall with a short, often crooked trunk and a spreading rounded crown; the bark is persistent, finely fissured and pale grey to grey-brown over most of the trunk and larger branches, shedding in small flakes from the upper limbs to reveal smooth white or cream patches. Juvenile leaves are opposite, sessile, broadly ovate to almost circular and glaucous bluish-grey, contrasting strongly with the alternate, petiolate, lanceolate to elliptic, dull green to silvery adult leaves 4 to 9 centimetres long. Creamy white flowers are borne in compound axillary or terminal panicles of seven-flowered umbels; each bud is club-shaped with a hemispherical operculum, and the open flowers display the dense brush of pale stamens characteristic of the genus. The fruit is a small obconical to cup-shaped woody capsule 3 to 6 millimetres long with included valves.