WHITE CEDAR
Melia azedarach
Plant Family
Meliaceae
Alternative Common Names
Cape lilac, texas umbrella.
Large deciduous tree, growing to 15m high, the bark grey-brown and more or less furrowed.
Leaves - alternate, large, each consisting of several pairs of “branches” along which are borne about 11 leaflets, the leaflets more or less toothed on the margins, ovate, 2.5-7.5cm long.
Flowers - lilac, fragrant, 5 petalled, borne in loose panicles in the leaf axils, the stamens united into a purple tube.
Fruit - globular or oval green berry which becomes pale-coloured or yellowish, containing a hard 5-celled “stone”.
Flowering late spring – early summer.
Indigenous uses - the bark was used as a fish poison.
Habitat
Found mainly on sand ridges and on sandplains in mulga communities; also recorded from gravelly red earths and sandy surfaced duplex soils in bimble box communities; occasionally on heavy clay soils.
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