Mallee are trees or shrubs, mainly certain species of

eucalypt Eucalypt is a descriptive name for woody plants with capsule fruiting bodies belonging to seven closely related genera (of the tribe Eucalypteae) found across Australasia: ''Eucalyptus'', '' Corymbia'', '' Angophora'', ''Stockwellia'', ''Allosyn ...

s, which grow with multiple stems springing from an underground

lignotuber A lignotuber is a woody swelling of the root crown possessed by some plants as a protection against destruction of the plant stem, such as by fire. Other woody plants may develop basal burls as a similar survival strategy, often as a response t ...

, usually to a height of no more than . The term is widely used for trees with this

growth habit Habit, equivalent to habitus in some applications in biology, refers variously to aspects of behaviour or structure, as follows: *In zoology (particularly in ethology), habit usually refers to aspects of more or less predictable ''behaviour'', i ...

across southern Australia, in the states of

Western Australia Western Australia (commonly abbreviated as WA) is a state of Australia occupying the western percent of the land area of Australia excluding external territories. It is bounded by the Indian Ocean to the north and west, the Southern Ocean to th ...

South Australia South Australia (commonly abbreviated as SA) is a state in the southern central part of Australia. It covers some of the most arid parts of the country. With a total land area of , it is the fourth-largest of Australia's states and territories ...

New South Wales ) , nickname = , image_map = New South Wales in Australia.svg , map_caption = Location of New South Wales in AustraliaCoordinates: , subdivision_type = Country , subdivision_name = Australia , established_title = Before federation , es ...

and

Victoria Victoria most commonly refers to: * Victoria (Australia), a state of the Commonwealth of Australia * Victoria, British Columbia, provincial capital of British Columbia, Canada * Victoria (mythology), Roman goddess of Victory * Victoria, Seychelle ...

, and has given rise to other uses of the term, including the

ecosystem An ecosystem (or ecological system) consists of all the organisms and the physical environment with which they interact. These biotic and abiotic components are linked together through nutrient cycles and energy flows. Energy enters the syste ...

s where such trees predominate, specific geographic areas within some of the states and as part of various species' names.

Etymology

The word is thought to originate from the word ''mali'', meaning water, in the

Wemba Wemba language The Wemba Wemba language is an extinct Aboriginal Australian language once spoken along the Murray River and its tributaries in North Western Victoria and South Central New South Wales. Nari Nari, a dialect of Wemba Wemba, is part of a langu ...

, an

Aboriginal Australian language The Indigenous languages of Australia number in the hundreds, the precise number being quite uncertain, although there is a range of estimates from a minimum of around 250 (using the technical definition of 'language' as non-mutually intellig ...

of southern New South Wales and Victoria. The word is also used in the closely related

Woiwurrung language The Woiwurrung, also spelt Woi Wurrung, Woiwurrong, Woiworung, Wuywurung, are an Aboriginal Australian people of the Woiwurrung language group, in the Kulin alliance. The Woiwurrung people's territory in Central Victoria extended from north of ...

and other Aboriginal languages of Victoria, South Australia, and southern New South Wales.

Overview

The term ''mallee'' is used describe various species of

tree In botany, a tree is a perennial plant with an elongated stem, or trunk, usually supporting branches and leaves. In some usages, the definition of a tree may be narrower, including only woody plants with secondary growth, plants that are ...

s or

woody plant A woody plant is a plant that produces wood as its structural tissue and thus has a hard stem. In cold climates, woody plants further survive winter or dry season above ground, as opposite to herbaceous plants that die back to the ground until sp ...

s, mainly of the

genus Genus ( plural genera ) is a taxonomic rank used in the biological classification of extant taxon, living and fossil organisms as well as Virus classification#ICTV classification, viruses. In the hierarchy of biological classification, genus com ...

''Eucalyptus'', which grow with multiple stems springing from an underground

bulbous In botany, a bulb is structurally a short stem with fleshy leaves or leaf basesBell, A.D. 1997. ''Plant form: an illustrated guide to flowering plant morphology''. Oxford University Press, Oxford, U.K. that function as food storage organs durin ...

woody structure called a lignotuber, or mallee root, usually to a height of no more than . The term is widely used for trees with this across southern Australia, across the states of Western Australia, South Australia, New South Wales and Victoria. The term is also applied to other eucalypts with a similar growth habit, in particular those in the closely related genera ''

Corymbia ''Corymbia'', commonly known as bloodwoods, is a genus of about one hundred species of tree that, along with ''Eucalyptus'', '' Angophora'' and several smaller groups, are referred to as eucalypts. Until 1990, corymbias were included in the gen ...

'' and '' Angophora''. Some of the species grow as single-stemmed trees initially, but recover in mallee form if burnt to the ground by

bushfire A wildfire, forest fire, bushfire, wildland fire or rural fire is an unplanned, uncontrolled and unpredictable fire in an area of combustible vegetation. Depending on the type of vegetation present, a wildfire may be more specifically identif ...

. Over 50 percent of eucalypt species are mallees, and they are mostly slow-growing and tough. The lignotuber enables the plant to regenerate after fire, wind damage or other type of trauma.

Range

Mallees are the dominant vegetation throughout

semi-arid A semi-arid climate, semi-desert climate, or steppe climate is a dry climate sub-type. It is located on regions that receive precipitation below potential evapotranspiration, but not as low as a desert climate. There are different kinds of semi-ar ...

areas of

Australia Australia, officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a Sovereign state, sovereign country comprising the mainland of the Australia (continent), Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous List of islands of Australia, sma ...

with reliable winter rainfall. Within this area, they form extensive

woodland A woodland () is, in the broad sense, land covered with trees, or in a narrow sense, synonymous with wood (or in the U.S., the ''plurale tantum'' woods), a low-density forest forming open habitats with plenty of sunlight and limited shade (see ...

s and shrublands covering over in New South Wales, north-western Victoria, southern South Australia and southern Western Australia, with the greatest extent being in South Australia (). There are also some species found in the

Northern Territory The Northern Territory (commonly abbreviated as NT; formally the Northern Territory of Australia) is an states and territories of Australia, Australian territory in the central and central northern regions of Australia. The Northern Territory ...

, namely ''

Eucalyptus gamophylla ''Eucalyptus gamophylla'', commonly known as warilu, blue-leaved mallee, twin-leaf mallee, twin-leaved mallee or blue mallee, is a species of mallee that is native to Western Australia, South Australia and the Northern Territory. It usually ha ...

'' (blue mallee), ''

Eucalyptus pachycarpa ''Corymbia pachycarpa'', commonly known as the urn-fruited bloodwood, mawurru, yilanggi or warlamarn, is a species of stunted tree or mallee that is endemic to northern Australia. It has thick, tessellated bark on the trunk and branches, a cro ...

'' and ''

Eucalyptus setosa ''Corymbia setosa'', commonly known as the rough leaved bloodwood or desert bloodwood, is a species of small tree that is endemic to north-eastern Australia. It has rough, tessellated brown bark on the trunk and branches, a crown of juvenile, ...

'', but these are isolated rather than forming woodland.

Farming on mallee land

Grubbing Grubbing or clearing is the removal of trees, shrubs, stumps and rubbish from a site. This is often at the site where a transportation or utility corridor, a road or power line, an edifice or a garden is to be constructed. Grubbing is performed fo ...

the land of mallee stumps for

agricultural Agriculture or farming is the practice of cultivating Plant, plants and livestock. Agriculture was the key development in the rise of Sedentism, sedentary human civilization, whereby farming of Domestication, domesticated species created food ...

purposes was difficult for early settler farmers, as the land could not be easily

plough A plough or plow ( US; both ) is a farm tool for loosening or turning the soil before sowing seed or planting. Ploughs were traditionally drawn by oxen and horses, but in modern farms are drawn by tractors. A plough may have a wooden, iron or ...

ed and

sown Sowing is the process of planting seeds. An area or object that has had seeds planted in it will be described as a sowed or sown area. Plants which are usually sown Among the major field crops, oats, wheat, and rye are sown, grasses and le ...

even after the trees were removed. In the

colony of South Australia In modern parlance, a colony is a territory subject to a form of foreign rule. Though dominated by the foreign colonizers, colonies remain separate from the administration of the original country of the colonizers, the '' metropolitan state'' ...

in the late 19th century, legislation which encouraged closer settlement made it even tougher for farmers to make a living. Grubbing the mallee lands was a laborious and expensive task estimated at £2–7 per acre,Richard Smith and his stump jumping plough (1)
and the government offered a £200 reward for the invention of an effective machine that would remove the stumps. To assist with the challenges of farming on mallee lands, some settlers turned their minds to the invention of technologies that could make some of the tasks easier. First the scrub or mallee roller was invented, which flattened the stumps and other vegetation, after which it would all be burnt and crops sown. The technique became known as "mullenising", as the invention of the device was attributed to a farmer called Mullen. A few years later the stump jump plough was invented on the

Yorke Peninsula The Yorke Peninsula is a peninsula located northwest and west of Adelaide in South Australia, between Spencer Gulf on the west and Gulf St Vincent on the east. The peninsula is separated from Kangaroo Island to the south by Investigator Strai ...

Richard Bowyer Smith Richard Bowyer Smith (2 September 1837 in London, England – 4 February 1919 in Subiaco, Western Australia) was an Australian inventor. Career Smith migrated from London to South Australia with his parents Owen and Mary Ann Smith (née Lee), ...

and perfected by his brother,

Clarence Herbert Smith Clarence Herbert Smith (10 August 1855 in Alma, Victoria — 25 July 1901 in Ardrossan, South Australia) was an Australian agriculturalist, engineer, blacksmith and inventor. He was a farmer at Kalkabury, north of Arthurton, South Australia, ...

. This machine had individually movable

ploughshare In agriculture, a plowshare ( US) or ploughshare ( UK; ) is a component of a plow (or plough). It is the cutting or leading edge of a moldboard which closely follows the coulter (one or more ground-breaking spikes) when plowing. The plowshar ...

s, enabling the whole plough to move over stumps rather than having to steer around them, and proved a great success.

Uses of the term

The term is applied to both the tree itself and the whole plant community in which it predominates, giving rise to the classification of

mallee woodlands and shrublands Mallee Woodlands and Shrublands is one of 32 Major Vegetation Groups defined by the Australian Government Department of the Environment and Energy. Description " Mallee" refers to the growth habit of a group of (mainly) eucalypt species that g ...

as one of Australia's major vegetation groups. This in turn has given rise to regions referred to as "the Mallee" in

and

. Several common names of eucalypt species have "mallee" in them, such as the Blue Mountains mallee (''Eucalyptus stricta'') and blue mallee ('' E. gamophylla'' and '' E. polybractea''). The

malleefowl The malleefowl (''Leipoa ocellata'') is a stocky ground-dwelling Australian bird about the size of a domestic chicken (to which it is distantly related). It is notable for the large nesting mounds constructed by the males and lack of parental ca ...

is a

bird Birds are a group of warm-blooded vertebrates constituting the class Aves (), characterised by feathers, toothless beaked jaws, the laying of hard-shelled eggs, a high metabolic rate, a four-chambered heart, and a strong yet lightweigh ...

characteristic of mallee habitat. The term is used in the phrase ''strong as a mallee bull'', and is

colloquial Colloquialism (), also called colloquial language, everyday language or general parlance, is the linguistic style used for casual (informal) communication. It is the most common functional style of speech, the idiom normally employed in conver ...

ly used is for any remote or isolated area, or as a

synonym A synonym is a word, morpheme, or phrase that means exactly or nearly the same as another word, morpheme, or phrase in a given language. For example, in the English language, the words ''begin'', ''start'', ''commence'', and ''initiate'' are all ...

for

outback The Outback is a remote, vast, sparsely populated area of Australia. The Outback is more remote than the bush. While often envisaged as being arid, the Outback regions extend from the northern to southern Australian coastlines and encompass a n ...

Species

Widespread mallee species include: * '' E. dumosa'' (white mallee) * '' E. socialis'' (red mallee) * '' E. gracilis'' (yorrell) * '' E. oleosa'' (red mallee) * '' E. incrassata'' (ridge-fruited mallee) * '' E. diversifolia'' (soap mallee) The following four Western Australian species can be found in the

Waite Arboretum Waite may refer to: People * Waite (name) * An alternative spelling for Wait (musician) Other * Waite, Maine, a town in the United States * Waite Research Precinct, located in the Adelaide suburb of Urrbrae, South Australia ** Waite Campus of t ...

Adelaide Adelaide ( ) is the capital city of South Australia, the state's largest city and the fifth-most populous city in Australia. "Adelaide" may refer to either Greater Adelaide (including the Adelaide Hills) or the Adelaide city centre. The dem ...

, and are suitable for gardens: *'' Eucalyptus pleurocarpa'', or tallerack *''

Eucalyptus pyriformis ''Eucalyptus pyriformis'', commonly known as pear-fruited mallee or Dowerin rose, is a species of low, straggly mallee that is endemic to Western Australia. It has smooth greyish brown bark sometimes with ribbony bark near the base, egg-shaped t ...

'', or dowerin rose *'' Eucalyptus preissiana'', or bell-fruited mallee *''

Eucalyptus grossa ''Eucalyptus grossa'', commonly known as coarse-leaved mallee, is a species of mallee or rarely a straggly tree, that is endemic to Western Australia. It has rough, fibrous bark on the trunk and all but the thinnest branches, broadly lance-shape ...

'', or coarse-leaved mallee An example of a mallee in a high-rainfall area is the rare yellow-top mallee ash, '' Eucalyptus luehmanniana''.

Etymology

Overview

Range

Farming on mallee land

Uses of the term

Species

See also

References

Further reading