page_title: Eucalyptus piperita
section_title: Taxonomy and naming
hierarchical_section_title: Eucalyptus piperita / Taxonomy and naming
caption_attribution_description: This is Plate 23 from John White's Journal of a Voyage to New South Wales. The plant is nominally Eucalyptus piperita, then given the common name "Peppermint Tree", now commonly known as "Sydney Peppermint" or "Urn-fruited Peppermint", and the plate accompanies the formal publication of the species by James Edward Smith. However, it was later found that only the centre and right images are this species; the left image in fact shows fruit of Eucalyptus capitellata.
context_page_description: Eucalyptus piperita, commonly known as Sydney peppermint and urn-fruited peppermint, is a small to medium forest tree native to New South Wales, Australia.
context_section_description: Specimens of E. piperita were first collected by First Fleet surgeon and naturalist John White, and published by James Edward Smith in his appendix to White's 1790 Journal of a Voyage to New South Wales. Smith gave it the specific epithet piperita because its odour of its essential oil was so similar to that of Mentha × piperita, the peppermint. White's Voyage also featured a plate showing the plant's leaves and old fruit, but no flowers.
  Smith's description was republished in his 1793 A Specimen of the Botany of New Holland, but this did not stop Richard Anthony Salisbury publishing the same plant as Metrosideros aromatica in 1796.
caption: Plate 23 of John White's Journal of a Voyage to New South Wales, showing leaves and fruit of E. piperita (Only the centre and right images portray E. piperita; the fruit on the left was later shown to be E. capitellata.)
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