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.
Melaleuca dealbata
Also called Karnbor. Blue Paperbark
In Singapore: Blue Paperback, Swamp Tea-Tree (Grown in Singapore)
Blue paperbark (karnbor) is a medium to large evergreen tree from tropical northern Australia, New Guinea and Indonesia, grown for its papery bark, blue-green leaves and cream flowers. It needs warm, humid conditions and reliably moist soil, so it suits wet sites.
Melaleuca dealbata, commonly known as karnbor or blue paperbark, is a plant in the myrtle family, Myrtaceae and is native to tropical areas in northern Australia, New Guinea and Indonesia. It is a medium to large leafy tree, growing in wet areas such as on the edges of coastal lagoons. It has papery bark, relatively large, blue-green leaves and spikes of cream-coloured flowers over a long period.
Karnbor occurs in southern Papua New Guinea, Irian Jaya, Indonesia and northern Australia from north of Maryborough in Queensland through north Queensland to the Top End of the Northern Territory and into the Broome-Derby area and Weaber Range in the east Kimberley region of Western Australia. It grows in warm to hot, humid, frost-free zones where the mean annual rainfall is mainly 1,100–1,750 mm (43–69 in) in summer. It is found in swampy areas near the coast and inland, mostly on wet sites along stream banks, on seasonally swampy ground and on the edges of lagoons with a range of soil types from sand to clay.
The timber from Melaleuca dealbata is moderately heavy and very strong suggesting its potential use for posts and poles. The tree is very decorative and useful for shelterbelts and soil stabilisation and has been used for the restoration of bauxite mining sites in northern Australia. It is an excellent source of nectar for honey production. The species has been tested for its oil components and found to produce an essential oil in low yield, including predominantly monoterpenes and sesquiterpenes with variation between individual plants.
Common netbush · Narrow Leaf Paperbark · Bracelet honey myrtle · River teatree · Cajeput · Myrtle Family · Goldfields Bottlebrush · Prickly Leaved Paperbark · Creek Tea–tree · Swamp paperbark · Slender Honey Myrtle · Weeping Paperbark
[Contains information from Leaf Area Index (LAI) and Heritage Trees from data.gov.sg (National Parks Board), made available under the terms of the Singapore Open Data Licence version 1.0]
Text excerpted from the Wikipedia article Melaleuca dealbata 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.
