Eucalyptus melliodora

Eucalyptus melliodora is a tree that typically grows to a height of and forms a lignotuber. The bark is variable ranging from smooth with an irregular, short stocking, to covering most of the trunk, fibrous, dense or loosely held, grey, yellow or red-brown, occasionally very coarse, thick, dark brown to black. The smooth bark above is shed from the upper limbs to leave a smooth, white or yellowish surface. Young plants and coppice regrowth have lance-shaped to elliptic leaves that are long and wide and petiolate. Adult leaves are the same dull light green or slate grey on both surfaces, lance-shaped to egg-shaped, long and wide on a petiole long. The vein on the leaf margin of both adult and juvenile leaves is markedly distant from the leaf margin. The flower buds are arranged in groups of seven on an unbranched peduncle long, the individual buds on pedicels long. Mature buds are club-shaped, oval or diamond-shaped, long and wide with a conical to rounded operculum. Flowering has been recorded in most months and the flowers are white. The fruit is a woody, hemispherical to shortened spherical capsule long and wide with the fruit near or below rim level. ==Taxonomy==

Eucalyptus melliodora was first formally described in 1843 by Johannes Conrad Schauer from an unpublished description by Allan Cunningham and the description was published in Walpers' book Repertorium Botanices Systematicae. The specific epithet (melliodora) is derived from the Latin words melleus meaning "honey" and odorus "scented". ==Distribution and habitat==

Yellow box is widely distributed on the eastern plains and tablelands from western Victoria, New South Wales and up from the capital territory to south-central Queensland. ==Ecology==

It is associated with inland grey box, fuzzy box (E. conica), white box (E. albens), pilliga grey box (E. pilligaensis), red ironbark (E. sideroxylon), narrow-leaved ironbark (E. crebra), Blakely's red gum (E. blakelyi), apple species (Angophora), black cypress (Callitris endlicheri), white cypress (Callitris glaucophylla), kurrajong (Brachychiton populneus) and wattles (Acacia) species. ==Uses==

Eucalyptus melliodora provides good firewood and hard, strong, durable timber. The honey produced from it is renowned for its quality. ==Notable specimens==

One of the few trees to survive the blast from the 6 August 1945 atomic bombing of Hiroshima Japan, was an E. melliodora. The tree was located from the hypocenter, and as of April 2019 was still standing. ==Gallery==

File:Eucalyptus melliodora 1.jpg|E. melliodora in Wagga Wagga Image:Yellow Box leaf.jpg|leaf File:Yellow Box leaves.jpg|leaves Image:Yellow Box blossoms and gumnuts.jpg|flowers and flower buds Image:Eucalyptus melliodora fruit.jpg|fruit File:Yellow Box trunk444.jpg|trunk detail File:Yellow Box flowers against leaves.jpg|flowers ==References==