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Corymbia, commonly known as bloodwoods, is a genus of about one hundred species of tree that, along with Eucalyptus, Angophora and several smaller groups, are referred to as eucalypts. Until 1990, corymbias were included in the genus Eucalyptus and there is still considerable disagreement among botanists as to whether separating them is valid. As of January 2020, Corymbia is an accepted name at the Australian Plant Census.
The bloodwoods had been recognised as a distinct group within the large and diverse genus Eucalyptus since 1867. Molecular research in the 1990s, however, showed that they, along with the rest of the section Corymbia, are more closely related to Angophora than to Eucalyptus, and are now regarded as a separate genus by the Australian Plant Census. All three genera, Angophora, Corymbia and Eucalyptus, are closely related, and are generally referred to as "".
Botanists Ken Hill and Lawrie Johnson were the first to define the genus Corymbia in 1995, identifying the bloodwoods, ghost gums and spotted gums as a group distinct from Eucalyptus.
Since 1995, there have been ongoing investigations into the relationships between the genera. Genetic analysis of ETS and ITS sequences of DNA in 2006 by Carlos Parra-O and colleagues of 67 taxa (47 of which were within Corymbia) yielded Corymbia and Angophora as each other's closest relatives, with the genus Eucalyptus as an earlier offshoot. The small genera Eucalyptopsis, Stockwellia and Allosyncarpia formed a clade which arose earlier still. In 2009, Parra-O and colleagues added more taxa and published a combined analysis of nuclear rDNA (ETS + ITS) and morphological characters published to clarify relationships within the genus. This confirmed two main clades, which they defined as the subgenera Corymbia and Blakella.
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