The open plant encyclopedia
Snap a photo or search by any name to see how to care for it, where it comes from, whether it's safe, and a 3D model you can turn.
The plants people record most in your country, and ones that grow there wild.
Filter by what you want to do, shape, origin, country, care and safety.
Leptospermum laevigatum
Also called Australian teatree, Australian myrtle, Coastal Teatree, Coast Teatree
Coast tea tree (Leptospermum laevigatum, sometimes listed as Gaudium laevigatum) is a bushy shrub or small tree native to south-eastern Australia, widely planted as an ornamental, windbreak and sand stabiliser. It is hardy and tolerant of sandy, poor soils and salt wind, and it is often a weed where introduced.
Gaudium laevigatum, commonly known as the coast tea tree, is a species of shrub or small tree that is endemic to south-eastern Australia, but has been widely introduced in other places where it is often considered to be a weed. It has thin, rough bark on the older stems, narrow egg-shaped leaves, relatively large white flowers and flat topped fruit that is shed shortly after reaching maturity.
This species is planted widely (as Leptospermum laevigatum) as a garden ornamental or display tree. It is useful as a windbreak or hedging plant and for the rapid stabilisation of sandy soils, and in rehabilitation areas where construction or mining has taken place. It has begun to be cultivated for essential oil production, marketed as Coastal tree tree oil, and has shown some beneficial anti-microbial properties.
Gaudium laevigatum is native to New South Wales, Victoria and Tasmania where it grows in heath, sometimes forest and on coastal dunes and cliffs south from Nambucca Heads in New South Wales to Anglesea in Victoria and northern Tasmania. It has also been introduced to Queensland, South Australia, Western Australia and countries overseas including southern Africa, New Zealand, Hawaii and the Central Coast of California.
Text excerpted from the Wikipedia article Gaudium laevigatum 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.
