From Latin alatus (winged) and issimus (very much so), referring to the prominently winged buds and fruits.

Wing-fruited Mallee.

Mallee to c. 7 m high or sometimes a small tree; forming a lignotuber.
Bark rough, grey and shaggy or flaky on part or all of trunk, sometimes smooth throughout with red-brown and whitish grey to grey-brown bark.
Branchlets glaucous or non-glaucous; lacking oil glands in the pith.
Juvenile growth (coppice or field seedlings to 50 cm): stems rounded in cross-section; juvenile leaves always petiolate, opposite for c. 3 nodes then alternate, ovate to lanceolate, 4–10 cm long, 1.5–4 cm wide, dull, green; new growth glaucous but the white wax not persisting as lamina expands and stems elongate.
Adult leaves alternate; petiole 0.9–2.5 cm long; blade lanceolate, 5.5–13 cm long, 1–3 cm wide, base tapering to petiole, concolorous, dull, blue-green to light green (new growth glaucous but wax not persisting), side-veins at an acute or wider angle to midrib, densely to very densely reticulate, intramarginal vein close to margin, oil glands few, scattered, intersectional.
Inflorescences axillary unbranched, pendulous, peduncles 1.5–3.3 cm long, buds 3 per umbel, pedicellate (pedicels 1.3–1.5 cm long).
Mature buds ovoid (3.2–4.5 cm long, 1.5–3 cm wide), with c. 8 prominent longitudinal ribs that are thinner and broader than in the typical subspecies, glaucous or non-glaucous, scar present, operculum beaked or conical (2.5–2.7 cm long), outer stamens erect, inner inflexed, or all stamens ± obliquely arranged, anthers oblong, versatile, subdorsifixed, dehiscing by lateral slits, style long, stigma ± tapered, locules 3, 4 or 5, the placentae each with 6 vertical ovule rows (or with 6 rows increasing to 8 rows basally).
Flowers pink or red, rarely creamy yellow.
Fruit down-turned, pedicellate (pedicels 0.6–1.5 cm long), hemispherical to obconical, 1.4–2 cm long, 2.5–4.5 cm wide (including ribs which are wide enough to be called wings), rarely glaucous, disc raised and concave, valves 3, 4 or 5, exserted.
Seeds greyish brown, 2–3.5 cm long, more or less shortly pyramidal, dorsal surface shallowly reticulate, sides ridged, encircling marginal flange usually present, hilum terminal.

Cultivated seedlings (measured at c. node 10): cotyledons Y-shaped (bisected); stems rounded in cross-section; leaves always petiolate, opposite for 2 to 7 nodes then alternate, ovate-lanceolate, 3.5–10 cm long, 1.5–4 cm wide, dull, greyish green to green, new tip growth glaucous but not persisting.

Flowering recorded in July and October.

Native.

Occurs in the Great Victoria Desert, extending eastwards from Warburton, Western Australia, into the Serpentine Lakes area of South Australia.

Found on red sand dunes and sandplain.

Eucalyptus alatissima (Brooker & Hopper) D.Nicolle, Native Eucalypts of South Australia: 90–91 (2013); Eucalyptus kingsmillii subsp. alatissima Brooker & Hopper, Nuytsia 9(1): 38 (1993). Type: halfway between Neale Junction and Serpentine Lakes, Great Victoria Desert, W.A., 18 Apr. 1991, D. Nicolle 7; holo: CANB; iso: PERTH.

M.I.H. Brooker & S.D. Hopper, Nuytsia 9(1): 39, fig. 16 (1993), as Eucalyptus kingsmillii subsp. alatissima; Eucalyptus kingsmillii subsp. alatissima in EUCLID 4th edn (2020).

Brooker, M.I.H. & Hopper, S.D. (1993). New series, subseries, species and subspecies of Eucalyptus (Myrtaceae) from Western Australia and from South Australia. Nuytsia 9: 1–68.

Nicolle, D. (2013). Native eucalypts of South Australia. (Dean Nicolle : Adelaide).

Slee, A.V., Brooker, M.I.H., Duffy, S.M. & West, J.G. (2020). EUCLID - Eucalypts of Australia Forth Edition. (Centre for Australian National Biodiversity Research: Canberra, CSIRO, ABRS and others). 

Published 6 February 2025. Adapted from EUCLID - Eucalypts of Australia Forth Edition (2020) where treated as E. kingsmillii subsp. alatissima.