Melaleuca

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. A genus of evergreen trees and shrubs native to Australia, known for papery bark and aromatic leaves that yield tea tree oil
2. Australian myrtle-family plants with bottlebrush-like flowers, including the tea tree whose leaves produce a medicinal essential oil
3. Aromatic evergreen shrubs and trees of the myrtle family, mainly found in Australia, whose oils are used in antiseptics

Etymology: Melaleuca is a Greek-derived name for a genus of Australian shrubs and trees, and its parts are easy to read. "Melas" meant "black" and "leukos" meant "white," so the name joins the two into "black and white," a description of the bark's contrast. Some sources hold that the genus was named for the tree's habit of peeling away in pale papery layers over darker wood, though the name itself is the Greek compound. The word was not coined in antiquity. It is a modern scientific name, created by the botanists who classified the plants in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, when Latin and Greek roots were used to label newly described species. Ancient Greeks had no word for this tree, which had been unknown to them. The compound is built from "melas," from the same Proto-Indo-European root that gave Latin "melas" and English words like "melanin," and "leukos," which gives English "leukemia." The ending "-a" is the feminine form used for the genus name in Latin.

Synonyms: paperbark