Coast Tea-tree is a perennial, evergreen shrub up to five metres with greyish green foliage. The small leaves are oval, and leathery. Flowers are white with 5 small but broad petals above a cup-shaped woody base. Mature trunks are often gnarled and twisted, and generally grey in colour, with peeling papery bark.
The natural distribution for this species is the coast of NSW and northern Tasmania as well as eastern Victoria. Point Impossible is normally considered the most western point of its natural distribution however, some publications indicate it was not naturally present on the western side of Port Phillip Bay. Coast Tea-tree is one of the most invasive weeds of our coastal vegetation, able to radically change the structure of coastal vegetation communities.
Photos courtesy of Neil Tucker.