Melaleuca squarrosa

Melaleuca squarrosa, commonly called scented paperbark, is an evergreen shrub or small tree in the Myrtaceae family reaching 0.5 to 10 m in height with attractive arching branches and dense foliage. The bark is white to grey, papery, and exfoliates in thin layers, while the small leaves (5-16.2 mm long) are arranged in opposite decussate pairs forming four distinct longitudinal rows along the stems, each leaf bearing 5-7 prominent parallel veins. From spring to early summer it produces sweetly perfumed cream to pale yellow flowers in dense terminal bottlebrush-like spikes 22 mm in diameter, each spike containing 4-20 individual blooms whose five petals soon fall to reveal five bundles of long stamens. The flowers are followed by clusters of woody cup-shaped seed capsules that persist along the older wood. Native to damp heath, swamps, and dry sclerophyll forest of southeastern Australia, particularly Tasmania, it is widely cultivated as an ornamental screen plant.