Leptospermum liversidgei R. T. Baker & H. G. Smith

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Credits

Article from Bean's Trees and Shrubs Hardy in the British Isles

Recommended citation
'Leptospermum liversidgei' from the website Trees and Shrubs Online (treesandshrubsonline.org/articles/leptospermum/leptospermum-liversidgei/). Accessed 2024-03-28.

Glossary

linear
Strap-shaped.
orbicular
Circular.

References

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Credits

Article from Bean's Trees and Shrubs Hardy in the British Isles

Recommended citation
'Leptospermum liversidgei' from the website Trees and Shrubs Online (treesandshrubsonline.org/articles/leptospermum/leptospermum-liversidgei/). Accessed 2024-03-28.

An evergreen shrub 6 to 12 ft high, of graceful habit and with drooping branches, devoid of down in all its parts; young twigs very slender with over twenty leaves to the inch. Leaves 16 to 14 in. long, linear-oblong to obovate, specked very freely with oil-glands. Flowers solitary, very shortly stalked, coming from the leaf-axils, 14 to 13 in. in diameter, white. Petals orbicular, clawed. Seed-vessel circular, much flattened. Blossoms in June.

Native of New South Wales; first described in 1905. Port Macquarie appears to be one of its chief habitats. It is very distinct species on account of the smallness of its leaves and flowers, also in the slender, virgate character of the branches. It was finely grown at Ludgvan Rectory, near Penzance, and lived and flowered on the west side of a sheltered wall at Kew for a good many years, but the latter plant was killed by the severe weather during the winter of 1946–7. In the winter of 1928–9 it was cut to the ground but sprang up again freely afterwards. The leaves when crushed have a lemon-like odour and from them can be obtained a fragrant oil. The species is known in Australia as the ‘lemon-scented tea-tree’. In our cultivated plants the odour is rather faint, possibly owing to lack of sunshine.