Hello "M",
Until recently if you wanted a flowering gum tree you had to just go out and
buy one and hope for the best. Sometimes the flowers turned out red and
other times pink, but quite often it was an insipid white which you didn't
really want anyway! The good news is that it's now possible to buy flowering
gums with predictable flower colours. Specially bred for the home garden,
the new plants are hybrids between Eucalyptus ficifolia and E. ptychocarpa,
grafted on to E. intermedia rootstock.

ie E. intermedia (pink bloodwood) is what the tree E. Ficifolia is grafted
to.

Hope that helps.

Regards,
Mitchell

"M" wrote in message
...
The grafted WA gums have flowered well around Engadine in Sydney too.

We did a boy-prune on our red flowering one (Yes, wife and I took equal
responsibility!). It is shooting well, but some shoots also started
coming from the root stock bit. These new leaves are very rough, smell
very strongly of eucalyptus when crushed and their stems are covered in
tiny spines/fur. At first glance(touch) they reminded me of sandpaper
fig leaves.

Any ideas on what they use for the understock for these flowering gums?

Regards,
M