Tea Tree, Creamy Honey-myrtle
Melaleuca alternifolia · Myrtaceae · 티트리
How to spot it
Told apart by the combination of papery peeling white bark, narrow linear leaves 1 mm wide with an essential-oil smell, and white bottlebrush-like flower spikes.
Look
- Leaves
- Bright green aromatic leaves, very narrow and linear (about 35 mm long, about 1 mm wide) with pointed tips; the source of tea tree oil.
- Flowers
- White flowers gather in spikes about 5 cm long. Each flower is about 6 mm wide with up to 60 stamens and mainly blooms in summer.
- Fruit
- Small capsules about 3 mm wide sit where the flower spike was.
- Bark
- Papery bark that peels in strips.
Where it grows
- Native to
- Native from the northern New South Wales coast (north of Coffs Harbour) to near Tenterfield on the northern tablelands, and around Stanthorpe and Rathdowney in Queensland; grows along streams and on wet flats in dry sclerophyll forest and coastal scrub.
Sources
- 국립수목원 국가표준식물목록(KPNI 웹 조회)
- Australian Plants Society NSW — Melaleuca alternifolia
- Botanic Gardens of South Australia Plant Selector — Melaleuca alternifolia
- Carson et al., Clinical Microbiology Reviews(NIH PMC 공개본)
- Carson, Hammer, Riley, Clinical Microbiology Reviews 19(1):50–62 (2006), NIH PMC 공개본
- nccih.nih.gov 자료