What is this strange and interesting tree?
http://www.flickr.com/photos/23042737@N07/sets/72157608023778346/
I've been trying to figure it out for years. I must not be asking the right people. I even snapped off a branch and used an online leaf identifier. None of the trees listed matched it! Crummy program. Anyway, they are all over Orange County in Southern California, lining streets, filling parks and campuses, tall, sometimes bare and white, sometimes tan and peeling, sometimes convoluted from numerous trimmings to keep them polite and respectable city trees. Their tops as the pictures show appear tufted from below, like something drawn by Dr. Seuss. The leaves are narrow, light to medium green, slightly curvy, pointed, and grow in masses along the branch. I don't know about nuts or fruits from them.
I had thought before it could not be a eucalyptus because of the leaves I usually see in association with the name, the little round ones along a stalk. But on looking it up, you were right, a couple of you... if they aren't eucalyptus, then I dunno what they are. Of course, I didn't know what they were anyway, but never mind that. The leaves do indeed look just like these I found in a search:
http://www.gardeninginarizona.com/Plants/Myrtaceae/big/Eucalyptus_papuana2.html
Thanks for responding. Now I know the name of what has become one of my favorite trees since I moved here from Louisiana.
Heh, I guess you would think of it as a "basic" red gum eucalyptus if you grew up here, the way I knew about the "basic" cypress tree that grew in the swamps where I grew up. That's what I was looking for, a native. ;) Thanks for all the info!
Last detail I will add... it's a eucalyptus. The thing is somewhere around 40 feet tall, at least those in the pictures are. I know I didn't photograph the bottom of the tree, but surely it still doesn't look little, like the desert willow... even the goofy answerer said it looked tall. Thanks again for chiming in, everybody.