Beauty and strength in the local park

Red Ironbark wood is a 'handsome Australian hardwood', with excellent durability and strength - hence its use in wharves, bridges, railway sleepers and mining - as well as some beauty in crafted furniture and flooring. The species name, sideroxylon, translates as 'wood like iron'.

It is also sold as 'premium firewood', a more transient and less satisfying use of this fine tree.

For most of us, Eucalyptus sideroxylon is one of those eucalypts we recognise, due to its resinous red-black, deeply fissured, bark  as we pass slowly through country cities like Bendigo, or adding a bit of texture to our local parks, as I found in Ferndale Park, Glen Iris. Mary Ward, President of the RBGV Melbourne Friends (who doesn't live too far away from me) reported in her email newsletter last week that her seven year-old grandson was worried the tree in their local park had been burnt. She reassured it hadn't been and that's just the way it looks.

There are other ironbarks, but Red Ironbark is the best known. In nature (that is, unplanted), it occurs on slopes and plains in Queensland, New South Wales and Victoria. Good ironbark forests can be found further north of Bendigo, such as Chiltern. The other natural forests of Ironbark in Victoria are the [not-Red] Ironbark, Eucalyptus tricarpa.

Eucalyptus tricarpa used to be part of Eucalyptus sideroxylon, separated out a subspecies in 1962, before being raised to species level by the some of the same authors in 1991. It grows in central and eastern Victoria, and up into the south coast of New South Wales, and has three rather than six or more in each cluster, and larger fruits.

In 2010, a new subspecies (improcera) from inland Queensland, was extracted from Eucalyptus sideroxylon, but that needn't trouble us here in Victoria, in nature or cultivation.

The Red Ironbark grown in streets and parks is the widespread Eucalyptus sideroxylon subspecies sideroxylon. The variant of that subspecies in my local park in flower in May this year was the pink-flowered form. There are other trees, not flowering this year, and a few with redder tassles.

Some cultivars are named for their flower colour, such as 'Rosea' for a bright red one. I gather seeds from any individual may grow into trees of various flower hues, although they tend towards the colour of the parent.

I rediscovered the beauty of this tree - its charcoal-like bark contrasting so strongly against the pale leaves and soft coloured flowers - in these relatively new plantings in our local park.

Looking at them afresh though, took me back (mentally) to scattered specimens through the goldfield forests of Castlemaine - which are in fact Eucalyptus tricarpa - and to box-ironbark forests in various parts of central and northern Victoria - which included either species, depending on the location.

This picture below is the only one I could find on my computer of 'wild' ironbarks... It's from the Astronomical Society of Victoria's Leon Mow Dark Sky Site, at Heathcote. A good place to see ironbarks (Eucalyptus tricarpa) as well as stars.