Thread: Identifying a white timber, scrubby native tree

Can’t help with id but going on the leaves and bark I’d say it’s an Acacia of some description

Thanks DJ - yeah, aspects of it really do make me think acacia, but some features, the multi-stem for example, speak against that.

We've been trawling the net this evening, and think we might have a candidate: Notelaea microcarpa - aka Mock Olive.

So far I'm finding nothing on the quality, or indeed safety (to burn near food say), of the timber. It's part of the Oleaceae family, so a cousin of olive, which does have a good reputation. I guess I'll seal some ends up and pop a few logs somewhere out of the way for a year and see what happens.

Some light reading for you, a flora species list for the NP

https://www.environment.nsw.gov.au/r...FaunNWWOL1.pdf

Look at the mapping to work out the geology and flora community for the area you found the tree then work through the listed native and possibly exotics for the area.

Other useful resources are the "Lucid" keys to Wattles & Euc's etc
Wattle Home (lucidcentral.org)
EUCLID Home

Originally Posted by jedd

We've been trawling the net this evening, and think we might have a candidate: Notelaea microcarpa - aka Mock Olive.

I think your on the money with this one
Log Dog

Vern has an image at

All the eggs (ttit.id.au) go to egg #457

& notes here

Mock Olive (ttit.id.au)

Mobyturns - those are some spectacular resources, thank you. Bookmarked for future reference.

I've put some of the thinner sections aside now, up to 50mm thick. The bark is quite thin, so I'm hopeful if they really are prone to drying without cracking that they may be useful for some small feature material. Sounds like Vern has the luxury of not having to deal often with 'plain' woods - I think the light colour, so long as the grain doesn't look like radiata, could be a nice contrast option. : )

Definitely not an acacia I'd say - those are true leaves & the venation is not consistent with acacia "leaves" which are not actually leaves but flattened stems with parallel venation & don't have that prominent mid-vein that your leaves show. Most acacias start out with true leaves, which are multi-pinnate, but only a few like A. mearnsii retain them into their adult form.

It can be extremely difficult to work out a species from bark & leaves alone. I doubt it's 'mock olive' the bark looks too different, but I could be wrong. You really do need flowers & fruits to id a tree confidently, so have a good look in the Spring & see if you can find some in flower (or they may be Autumn-flowering). If you get some decent pics, your state herbarium will probably put you on the right track.

There seems to be so many of these small trees that we take no notice of until we have to prune or remove one. I made a similar discovery with a tree that pops up all over our place, which I took little notice of until I had to remove one that wanted to push the garden shed out of its way. It has a dense, fine grained wood that is milky white. With the help of a botanist mate, that one was quickly identified as Mallotus sp. (the bark is very like that on your tree, but the leaves are quite different, so I'm not suggesting that's what you've got). But there is another little tree with similar bark & wood, but quite different leaves & flowers which we have yet to pin down. I keep meaning to take a bit in flower to the herbarium, which is only about 10 Ks from me, but the flowers are only on very briefly & by the time I remember they are too far gone to be worth taking in. Some day I'll remember in time!

Any wood is worth drying & playing with, it might turn out great stuff or rubbish, but you'll have fun finding out & it won't cost you anything but a bit of time splitting or sawing the fresh pieces. The Mallotus dries well without degrade and works like European Box (Buxus sp.) I used some as a box substitute for the nuts on my miniature plough plane:

3 plough a.jpg

I've got some larger bits from the main trunk that are still drying, and looking forward to playing with it in another year or so...

Cheers,