Southern Cross Silver Mallee is a multi-stemmed eucalypt from Western Australia, usually 2 to 15 m tall, grown for its silvery foliage and tough, drought-hardy habit. It needs full sun, free-draining soil and very little water once established.
Family
Myrtaceae (Myrtle family)
Grows as
Tree
Light
Full sun
Water
Water deeply during establishment, then rarely; let the soil dry out between waterings.
Soil
Sandy, clay or loam soil; tolerates alkaline soils and granite-derived ground.
Temperature
Frost and drought tolerant; suitable for cool to warm climates, protect young plants from hard frost.
How easy
Easy
Native range
Western Australia
Climate
subtropical
About
Eucalyptus crucis is a species of mallee that is endemic to Western Australia. There are three subspecies, commonly known as silver mallee or Southern Cross mallee, (subspecies crucis), narrow-leaved silver mallee, (subsp. lanceolata) and Paynes Find mallee, (subsp. praecipua). It has rough bark that is shed in curling flakes, more or less round, glaucous juvenile leaves, egg-shaped intermediate leaves and lance-shaped adult leaves. The type of bark and the proportion of juvenile, intermediate and adult leaves in the crown of mature plants varies with subspecies. The flower buds are arranged in groups of seven in leaf axils, the flowers are whitish to pale yellow and the fruit is a conical to hemispherical capsule.
How to grow it
This eucalypt is frost and drought tolerant and is suitable for alkaline soils. It is commonly used as a windbreak, a street tree, for its decorative fruit, for erosion control, and as a honey producing or bird nesting plant.
Where it grows
Silver mallee is found in an area in the Goldfields-Esperance and Wheatbelt region of Western Australia where it grows in sandy, clay or loam soils amongst granite outcrops. It is associated with sheoak (Allocasuarina species), wattle (Acacia species) and one-sided bottlebrush
Text excerpted from the Wikipedia article Eucalyptus crucis by its contributors, under CC BY-SA 4.0; the excerpts and the care summary drawn from them are shared under the same licence.
The care summary was written by AI (Claude, Anthropic) from the sources on this page, with general growing knowledge where they are silent. Check before relying on it.
Life form, climate and native range: World Checklist of Vascular Plants, Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew (CC BY 3.0), reformatted; see Plants of the World Online.