Eucryphia milliganii Hook. f.

Eucryphia milliganii subsp. milliganii was introduced to British cultivation by Harold Comber in 1929 but received only an undeservedly short note from Bean (1981). It is a most attractive small tree, forming a column of dense small dark leaves sprinkled over with the pure white flowers, perhaps more resembling a myrtle than other eucryphias. There is an exceptionally fine example at Logan House (adjacent to Logan Botanic Garden) in Scotland, which stood approximately 9 m tall in 2006 (dbh 32 cm) and 11 m tall in 2019 (dbh 44 cm) (Tree Register 2019). TROBI records a scattering of good specimens along the western fringes of the UK, although curiously none from the island of Ireland, but it also grows well away from the mildest areas for example at the Sir Harold Hillier Gardens, Hampshire, and in a private collection in west Oxfordshire (Tree Register 2019). A cool site with abundant moisture and soil that is more or less lime-free seem to be important. Its frost tolerance is not known, but –10ºC is suggested as a limit for the closely related E. lucida (Hogan 2008). It seems to be rare in Europe, and also in the United States although it is in cultivation in the western states, where it should do well in milder coastal areas.

It is available in the nursery trade and continues to be collected by teams from major botanical institutions in the northern hemisphere, for example by staff from Bedgebury National Pinetum, UK, who collected it in 2004 under the number DTAZ 45. Young plants from this collection are establishing at Bedgebury and at a handful of collaborating collections, for example at Benmore Botanic Garden in Argyll where they have been planted in the Tasmanian area (pers. obs.).

The species was described by Joseph Hooker based on specimens collected by Scotsman Joseph Milligan (1807–1884), Surgeon Superintendent to the Van Diemens Land Company (S. O’Brien pers. comm. 2018).