Queensland blue gum

Eucalyptus tereticornis, the forest red gum or Queensland blue gum, is a large evergreen tree in the family Myrtaceae, native to eastern Australia from southeastern Papua New Guinea through Cape York down the eastern seaboard to Victoria, where it grows on alluvial flats, low coastal hills and grassy open woodlands, often in association with E. melliodora and Angophora. It typically reaches 20 to 50 metres in height with a straight, clean trunk and an open, irregularly spreading crown. The bark is shed in large irregular plates and ribbons leaving a smooth, mottled trunk surface in shades of white, grey, blue-grey and pinkish, sometimes with a short rough stocking persisting at the base. Mature leaves are alternate, narrowly lanceolate to falcate, 10 to 20 centimetres long, glossy green and concolorous. Inflorescences of seven to eleven flowers in the leaf axils have horn-shaped, narrowly conical operculate buds, opening to creamy white flowers, succeeded by hemispherical to ovoid woody fruits 4 to 8 millimetres across with strongly exserted, ascending valves.