MUGGA IRONBARK
Eucalyptus sideroxylon
Plant Family
Myrtaceae
Alternative Common Names
Mugga, red-flowering ironbark, red ironbark
Medium to tall tree, to 12m high. Distinctive dark, jet-black, hard, deeply furrowed bark, strongly impregnated with the gum kino.
Leaves - alternate, lanceolate, 6-11cm long, dull greyish-green, stalked.
Flowers - usually cream, borne in clusters of 3-7, each cluster at the end of a down curved stalk.
Fruit - ovoid to globular, stalked, the valves deeply enclosed.
Flowering mainly winter-spring.
Indigenous uses - weapons were made from the timber; timber also used to build structures if indigenous were going to stay in a certain area for some time.
Habitat
Mostly on low ridges and footslopes with gravelly loam soils, where it is often extensive and dominates the vegetation or is co-dominant with green mallee or currawang; also in isolated clumps on flats with sandy loam textured red earths in mallee communities.
14, 18