On the weekend, I went to a fete at Black Forest Primary School. They had a sensational community garden, complete with a sale of silkworms, 5 for a dollar! Who could resist? Clearly not me (you guessed), so there are 5 silkworms in the lounge munching through mulberry leaves. More on that later.
While my posse of friends and my house guests from Denmark were hitching up their bikes, I took a sample of the tree right at the dead end of Kertaweeta Ave Black Forest where we entered the school grounds, with the help of a taller friend. Excuse the extra good photo….
This tree had smooth, pale bark in some of the finer upper branches.
I don’t know why, but I do not entirely trust the result that Euclid and I produced: E Corynodes. Poor Euclid, depending on me. There were no mature fruits, buds or flowers to consider, and that makes the result less dependable and the chance of detecting an error smaller. Euclid suggests E Corynodes can be confused with several other species, but look at this account of how to tell them apart!
E. fibrosa subsp. fibrosa, E. fibrosa subsp. nubila, E. melanophloia and E. rhombica … differ in having buds with stamens all fertile and irregularly flexed. E. sideroxylon differs by having buds that hold the outer operculum into maturity and both the inner and outer operculum shed together at anthesis (no operculum scar).
So that would be obvious, then! Based on this I wonder how I can be sure this is not E Sideroxylon, which would give orange too… Because whatever its true name, this is the result I got.
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