Lemon-scented Gum is named appropriately for the amazing, strong lemon fragrance its leaves makes when crushed. Its strong scent is a distinguishing attribute, with its oils being used for medicinal and insect repellent purposes by the Aboriginal natives and also in the modern day as essential oils. Lemon Scented Gums can grow up to 50 metres tall and have a straight upright growing habit with a pale smooth barked exterior. it’s pale green buds blossom into creamy, white flowers in winter and its extremely dense timber provides us with some incredibly tight bottom end and a strong, rich metallic note for our snare drums.

Lemon-scented gum snare drums have a dense tone that reflects the hardy wood it’s made from. At lower tunings it has a rich controlled, dense metallic note with a buttery warmth to round off the edges. It’s one of the most metallic sounding drums in our lineup, and in its higher tunings has an ear whopping metallic bite reminiscent of a thick brass snare drum. The tone has quite a dense roundness to it with a tight bottom end nicely saturating and supporting the note.

Lemon Scented Gum and Spotted Gum while extremely similar woods can usually be distinguished by the Lemon Scented’s citrus aromatic leaves, and it’s pale yellow, smooth bark. Spotted Gums can be distinguished by its freckled “spotted” bark and most of the time have a more greyish hue. Frasier Avenue in Perth’s Kings Park is a perfect showcase of Lemon Scented Gums, planted in memoriam to prominent Western Australian citizens commemorated in 1929, lining the road leading to the Kings Park War Memorial.

TYPE: Hardwood

COLOUR: Creamy light brown, slightly yellow grey tinged

GRAIN STRUCTURE: Moderately coarse and varies, wavy grain can produce attractive fiddleback figure.

DENSITY: Green 1180kg/m3, Air-dry 950kg/m3

JANKA SCALE: 11 KN Dry