Guides’ plant of the month for June – Eucalyptus youngiana

The Eucalyptus youngiana or large-fruited mallee is a spectacular specimen which can be found in several parts of Kings Park’s Western Australian Botanic Garden. It flowers mainly in the Noongar Makuru season – the winter months. It is unmistakeable when flowering, thanks to its large voluptuous ribbed buds and huge showy flowers up to 10 cm in diameter. The flowers can be cream or pink and are among the largest of any eucalypt. After flowering it develops massive flat circular woody seed capsules (‘gum nuts’) that persist on the shoot for many years and are the heaviest of any eucalypt.

It is a true mallee with a lignotuber or mallee root of dormant buds that can sprout after damage to the tree from fire or storms. It is the most common mallee in the southern parts of the Great Victoria Desert, scattered widely from the north of Kalgoorlie, then east into South Australia and the south-west corner of the Northern Territory, growing on red loams and sandy soils.

Its other common names are Ooldea Mallee which refers to its presence around Ooldea, a small (now abandoned) settlement in South Australia on the Transcontinental railway line where the pioneer anthropologist Daisy Bates lived from 1919-1935, and Yarldarlba which is its traditional name around Ooldea. Its botanical name was given in 1876 in honour of Jesse Young, who collected the first scientific specimens in May 1875 at Queen Victoria Springs, northeast of Kalgoorlie, when he was a member of Ernest Giles’ expedition from South Australia to Western Australia.