It has smooth, pale, uniform or slightly mottled, white to pink or coppery bark that is shed in thin flakes.

[2][5][6][7][8] Lemon-scented gum was first formally described in 1848 by William Jackson Hooker, who gave it the name Eucalyptus citriodora in Thomas Mitchell's Journal of an Expedition into the Interior of Tropical Australia.

[2][6] Kings Park in Perth has an avenue of this species planted many years ago, but the species has spread to become an environmental weed in the Sydney and Blue Mountains region in New South Wales and in open woodland areas in the south-west of Western Australia.

[3][13] The essential oil of the lemon-scented gum mainly consists of citronellal (80%),[14] produced largely in Brazil and China.

The refined oil's citronellal content is turned into cis- and trans- isomers of p-menthane-3,8-diol (PMD), a process which occurs naturally as the eucalyptus leaves age.