Other Names:  Red Flowered Yellow Gum, White Ironbark Gum

Description:

This tree has cream to gray colored bark that sheds in flakes, revealing the yellow-white trunk; fuzzy red flowers in summer; can be pruned to maintain size; a beautiful landscape specimen, alone or in groups, with a fine airy texture

Ornamental Features

Yellow Gum is primarily valued in the landscape for its ornamental upright and spreading habit of growth. It features showy red button flowers at the ends of the branches in mid summer. It has attractive grayish green evergreen foliage. The fragrant narrow leaves are highly ornamental and remain grayish green throughout the winter. The peeling gray bark and brown branches are extremely showy and add significant winter interest.

Landscape Attributes

Yellow Gum is an evergreen tree with an upright spreading habit of growth. It lends an extremely fine and delicate texture to the landscape composition which can make it a great accent feature on this basis alone.

This tree will require occasional maintenance and upkeep, and can be pruned at anytime. It has no significant negative characteristics.

Yellow Gum is recommended for the following landscape applications;

• Accent
• Shade
• Vertical Accent

Planting & Growing

Yellow Gum will grow to be about 50 feet tall at maturity, with a spread of 30 feet. It has a high canopy with a typical clearance of 7 feet from the ground, and should not be planted underneath power lines. As it matures, the lower branches of this tree can be strategically removed to create a high enough canopy to support unobstructed human traffic underneath. It grows at a fast rate, and under ideal conditions can be expected to live for 60 years or more.

This tree should only be grown in full sunlight. It does best in average to evenly moist conditions, but will not tolerate standing water. It is particular about its soil conditions, with a strong preference for sandy, acidic soils, and is able to handle environmental salt. It is somewhat tolerant of urban pollution. This is a selected variety of a species not originally from North America.