An evergreen tree of small or medium size; young shoots and common-stalk of leaf clothed with pale, short, brown hairs. Leaves opposite, pinnate, composed of five to thirteen leaflets. Leaflets scarcely stalked, narrowly oblong, not toothed, oblique at the base, the midrib terminated by a bristle-like mucro; 1⁄2 to 3 in. long, 1⁄8 to 5⁄8 in. wide; glossy dark green and with short, appressed hairs above when young; rather glaucous and downy (chiefly on the midrib and veins) beneath; margins downy. Flowers about 1 in. wide, solitary in the axils of the current year’s growth; flower-stalk downy, up to 3⁄4 in. long, with a cup-like bract towards the top. Petals four, pure white, obovate; stamens white, 3⁄8 in. long, very numerous and forming a brush-like cluster 5⁄8 in. wide.
Native of New South Wales on wooded hills near the source of the Clyde and Shoalhaven rivers; originally discovered by Chas. Moore about 1860; introduced to Kew in 1915. It most closely resembles the Chilean E. glutinosa, having, like it, pinnate leaves and four-petalled flowers, but differs in the more numerous, much narrower leaflets and evergreen habit. It flowered in the Temperate House at Kew in August 1921, but is not so attractive in bloom as the Chilean species, the flowers being so much smaller. The foliage is handsome and the growth elegant. It succeeds in S. Devon, Cornwall, Scilly Isles and similarly favoured spots, and has reached 20 ft at Nymans in Sussex. The finest specimen known grows at Trewithen in Cornwall, which measures 54 × 23⁄4 ft (1971). There is one almost as large at Mount Usher in Co. Wicklow, Eire.