Rottnest island teatree

Melaleuca lanceolata, commonly known as Rottnest Island teatree, black paperbark or moonah, is a hardy evergreen large shrub or small tree of the family Myrtaceae endemic to southern Australia, typically reaching 4 to 10 metres tall with an often gnarled, twisted trunk clad in rough, dark grey, deeply furrowed bark. The branchlets are slender and somewhat pendulous, bearing small, alternate, linear to narrow-lanceolate, more or less terete leaves 5 to 15 millimetres long and about 1 millimetre wide, dotted with oil glands and usually drying dark green. Flowers are produced in short cylindrical bottlebrush-like spikes 1.5 to 4 centimetres long at the tips of branches, principally in summer though sometimes through the year; each spike contains many small white to cream flowers with five short petals and conspicuous tufts of free stamens. The fruit is a small, hard, woody, cup-shaped capsule 2 to 4 millimetres across, retained on the branches in dense clusters for several years. The species grows on calcareous and saline coastal soils as well as inland on sand, mallee and dry woodland sites across all mainland southern states.