San Diego, planted in front of a house, this looks sort of like a Eucalyptus, except for the drupelet appearance of the fruits. And I can't find anything like it on a search for purple eucalyptus. Nice of the trunk to creep along the ground like that so I could get close to the flowers. I'd love to have the time back I spent trying to ID this myself. Maybe someone just knows it?
Hmm, thanks Ron. The name is certainly familiar, and I did actually look up "myrtle", but there are so many Melaleuca, that maybe I really have never seen one looking like this. There's one called Melaleuca conothamnoides, common name "Purple Pom-Pom Myrtle", practically my exact description, but it's a small shrub. Here's one that's supposed to be Melaleuca nesophila. I can't tell if it's the same or not. Here's another photo, where this species is described as having purple pompoms (with a link to a photo). And someone guessed that his photos are that species. This Australian Plant Image index page for Melaleuca seems to have several photos for all 200 species (probably an exaggeration; there are a lot of photos, but you have to click to see each one). I think I'm happy enough to be able to call it Melaleuca and I'll let it go at that. But then how great is this - I decided to go one page farther in google search and just found a page of San Diego plant pictures - exactly what I was hoping to find, but not what I was looking for just now. It has a photo of Melaleuca nesophila that's very convincing.
