Eucryphia × hillieri

TSO logo

Sponsor

Kindly sponsored by
William & Griselda Kerr

Credits

Tom Christian (2021)

Recommended citation
Christian, T. (2021), 'Eucryphia × hillieri' from the website Trees and Shrubs Online (treesandshrubsonline.org/articles/eucryphia/eucryphia-x-hillieri/). Accessed 2024-03-28.

Glossary

clone
Organism arising via vegetative or asexual reproduction.
dbh
Diameter (of trunk) at breast height. Breast height is defined as 4.5 feet (1.37 m) above the ground.
entire
With an unbroken margin.
glaucous
Grey-blue often from superficial layer of wax (bloom).
hybrid
Plant originating from the cross-fertilisation of genetically distinct individuals (e.g. two species or two subspecies).
imparipinnate
Odd-pinnate; (of a compound leaf) with a central rachis and an uneven number of leaflets due to the presence of a terminal leaflet. (Cf. paripinnate.)

Credits

Tom Christian (2021)

Recommended citation
Christian, T. (2021), 'Eucryphia × hillieri' from the website Trees and Shrubs Online (treesandshrubsonline.org/articles/eucryphia/eucryphia-x-hillieri/). Accessed 2024-03-28.

An evergreen tree to 10 m tall, leaves usually pinnate with 3–5(–9) leaflets, glaucous beneath, margins entire, the terminal leaflet always largest, narrowly oblong-elliptic, to 6 × 1.5 cm, lateral leaflets oblong, to 3 × 1 cm. Leaf apices rounded or shortly mucronate, mucro to 2 mm. Solitary, white cup-shaped flowers to 3.5 cm across are borne in mid-late summer. (Cullen et al. 2011).

USDA Hardiness Zone 8b-11

RHS Hardiness Rating H5

A hybrid between the ‘mainland’ Australian Eucryphia moorei and the Tasmanian E. lucida, which was described from a self-sown plant found in Hillier’s Chandlers Ford nursery in 1953. This original cross was propagated and distributed under the cultivar name ‘Winton’ and it is this clone that is now in general cultivation.

It most closely resembles E. moorei from which it can generally be distinguished by its shorter and broader lateral leaflets which are usually fewer in number. From other pinnate-leaved species and hybrids it can be distinguished in the following ways: by its entire margins (toothed in E. glutinosa); by its glaucous undersides (pale grey-green in E. × intermedia); by its small terminal leaflets to 6 × 1.5 cm (to 12 × 3.5 cm in E. × splendens).

A tree grown as ‘Winton’ had, by 2012, reached 9 m × 26 cm dbh at Achamore on the Isle of Gigha, on the west coast of Scotland, and another specimen at Castlewellan, Northern Ireland, was 14 m when last measured in 2015, but this is not attributed to ‘Winton’ and so may descend from a separate hybridisation event (The Tree Register 2018).

This is a very attractive hybrid, hardier than its E. moorei parent, and it deserves to be more widely planted.


'Winton'

Discussed in the entry for E. × hillieri.