Landscape Plants

Some 150 species of evergreen trees or shrubs; bark often in thin with corky layers.  Leaves alternate, occasionally opposite, simple, from lanceolate to nearly cylindrical, with 1-3 veins, oil glands beneath in many species.  Flowers in cylindrical spikes to ovate heads, petals outspread, 5 sepals, many stamens.  Fruit is a capsule, densely clustered on the branches, surrounded by the woody flower tube.   Mostly in Australia and Tasmania, one species, M. leucadendron, distributed from Australia through the Pacific Islands to the East Indies and the Philippines.
Melaleuca: from Greek melas, black; leucos, white.  Some species have black trunks and white branches.