> For more than 200 years, seeds of the eucalyptus tree have been planted beyond the bounds of Australia's coastline.
> It has been cultivated around the world, making a new home in southern Europe, South America, parts of Africa, the west coast of the United States, and even parts of South-East Asia.
> But there is now a debate over whether this tree has been worth the industry and habitat it provides.
I moved to Australia in 1988. Nobody, not one Australian I know has ever said eucalyptus was a sensible export as live wood, or was suitable for planting like this in these countries. I can't work out who did think this was a good idea.
So the "now there is a debate" thing is like WTF? The first time I heard about wildfire in Californian eucalyptus there was a pretty strong man-in-the-pub debate about what happened. And that was over a decade ago.
I grew up in Tasmania, immersed in bush fire smoke during summers. As I travelled through the US and other places, I thought I was going nuts because I kept seeing trees that shouldn’t be there at all. Now I know why…
When you get stands of gum (eucalyptus) trees, you also get fast spreading tree-top fires since the living leaves of gum burn ferociously. Gum trees in urban areas or non-native areas are bad, bad news.
Blue gum is one of the fastest growing trees in the world. I understand exactly why someone would export it, because it's a wildly productive pulp tree under the right conditions.
Obviously there are significant negative externalities, and when it spreads in the wild and sets the countryside on fire every summer governments might regret allowing anyone to plant it, but that doesn't make putting in a blue gum plantation any less tempting.
"Nobody, not one Australian I know has ever said eucalyptus was a sensible export as live wood, or was suitable for planting like this in these countries. I can't work out who did think this was a good idea."
Well, I'd very definitely agree with that comment. I have firsthand experience of eucalyptus trees and bushfires and I find it truly perplexing why people in other countries would want to put their lives and property at risk by planting this dangerous invasive species that often grows faster and more robustly there than it does in Australia.
I grew up in a very fire-prone part of Australia in the Blue Mountains in New South Wales west of Sydney and I've lived through some of the most devastating fires. At the end I've posted a link to a YouTube video of a fire I was caught up in as a kid. It was many decades ago but I still have vivid memories of the event. It's impossible to forget witnessing over a hundred homes and businesses burn down as the fire raged through the township.
Unless one's been caught up in a raging bushfire it's almost impossible to visualize what it's really like, especially one involving eucalyptus trees, the roaring noise is almost deafening and suddenly trees just explode when the eucalypt oil ignites. It can be very frightening.
Luckily, my parents' home wasn't in the path of the fire it being several kilometers away but I saw the aftermath and I helped out with bringing bedding and provisions to the poor souls who'd lost their homes and possessions—many had lost everything. It was a truly pitiful sight to see so many people crammed into the town hall floor space of the next town with hardly a footstep between them.
The video is quite long, about 30 min, and of course it's a revisited historical video so the camera footage isn't a vivid as one expects nowadays. Nevertheless, it depicts the human loss very well indeed. When I first saw the video some years back I could feel myself reliving the event, it was quite uncanny and unsettling. Incidentally, in the video one gets a quick glimpse of that town hall where the victims were temporarily rehoused.
From images of recent fires across the globe that have involved eucalyptus trees, it seems to me we ought to be severely limiting these foreign plantings. I recall years ago, when I first went to California and saw that the eucalyptus trees grew better there that in many parts of Australia I was horrified. From my experience it was clear to me what was going to happen there.
> Well, I'd very definitely agree with that comment. I have firsthand experience of eucalyptus trees and bushfires and I find it truly perplexing why people in other countries would want to put their lives and property at risk by planting this dangerous invasive species that often grows faster and more robustly there than it does in Australia.
Trees that grow fast and robustly are great for developments! After you've bulldozed everything flat, built up homes of ticky-tacky, you've got to put trees in, and larger trees makes the development feel established; therefore trees that get large quickly are desirable. Building around existing trees is harder, if there even were any of size.
IIRC, eucalyptus will be happy to grow pretty close together, and you can have a line of them for a windbreak, and/or to soften highway noise.
Danger is for someone else to worry about. And cleaning up the tree droppings will fall on the homeowners association.
> "Nobody, not one Australian I know has ever said eucalyptus was a sensible export as live wood, or was suitable for planting like this in these countries. I can't work out who did think this was a good idea."
Obviously it's less likely to be thought a good idea now that we better understand the downsides, but the article this thread links to mentions ten times a pretty notable example of somebody who thought it was a good idea: Ferdinand Jacob Heinrich von Mueller, the first director of the Melbourne Botanic Gardens. FTA:
> "Von Mueller would send visiting botanists home with seeds and mail them to other correspondents in his network, always championing the benefits of the tree as he saw them."
and
> "Von Mueller had hoped the eucalyptus would reforest areas of Europe where native vegetation had been stripped away"
social elite developed around commanding long-distance trade, and the tree trafficking played into that social prominence narrative IMO. Think of "common people" without travel, "uneducated" people without a common (Latin) vocabulary for botany, and "poor" people without the Wealth of Nations to execute and broadcast their unnatural accomplishments, and the social status of the people who do have all of those aspects in public view. The reason for the quotes is that there is more than one form of wealth, more knowledge than Latin and ways to know the local ecosystems that do not involve crossing continents.. but the point is..
At every step, unwise or excessive displays of trade power, with exotic animals, plants and possessions, were used and wielded for relative social status, along with actual utility.
I imagine that the Australian Gum tree fits into that pattern.
I'm Australian, have travelled the world (incidentally since 1988), and have noted across the globe the eucalyptus spread before me .. it has been both a welcome and a tragic sight along the way.
Australians generally, these days, know that eucalyptus are dangerous but Australians didn't generally, as a culture, get recognized by their peers for great management of their unique eco-system during the formative periods of the nation, for good reason - and indeed Australians themselves had to learn a lot about the native flora, having ignored completely the original occupants own vast and valuable knowledge.
It is only relatively, recently rediscovered knowledge, all this talk of ecosystem management being healthy in the southern land, particularly with fire. Australias atrocious recent fires were a result of a complete lack of management even in the home grounds of the eucalyptus and other firey species.
Australia is a land of many eco-management mistakes and lessons, and even still much great ignorance. Australians are waking up to this.
But just so its clear, Aussies don't really do land management great. The assumption that there would be sensibilities about the spread of invasive species is a bit naive. Australia has vast contrasts in this regard, throughout its culture and indeed history. And, alas, industry.
>California
Having lived quite some halcyon years in California, I got very accustomed to the welcome site (and smell) of the eucalyptus among those golden purple hills and valleys .. and alas, it wasn't until the first real fires I saw there, that I understood what a foolish thing it was, indeed, to let landscape gardeners plant things for which they really, really didn't understand. But hey, that's California in a nutshell: the ball-python crammed palm tree I once saw catch fire one night, producing an awesome parade of flaming rat and weed and snake showering down on the brand new Miata of a colleague, was also kind of a wake-up call.
We (particularly, Australians[1]) have inherited the technical debt of poor ecosystem management, and need to refactor. Plant and encourage native species, always - and deter the intruders.
[1] - Although in Australias case, there is much immense knowledge to be rescued, alas, were we actually a bit more cognizant of that value and gave the original gardners their voice back.
Because the eucalyptus tree loves fire and fire loves it.
It needs fire to reproduce* and takes over the landscape after a fire, outcompeting many other species. This is not unique to eucalyptus. Some pines also need fire to reproduce and redwoods tend to survive fire better than other trees and thrive in the aftermath.
But it sounds like eucalyptus may actively promote fire in a way I haven't heard of other trees doing.
> When the oils in the tree heat up, the plant releases flammable gas, which ignites into a fireball. This accelerates the eucalyptus fire hazards in a region and discourages firefighting efforts… The plants are considered dangerous in fire-prone areas because of their habit of shooting sparks if they catch fire. [0]
Apparently it turns into an ember-spraying fuel-air bomb when it catches fire. I’m not sure you could design a more fire-promoting tree.
And it's worse when it's an invasive species as the leaves are not getting thinned. It's certainly concerning to me to learn that eucalyptus has been actively exported, is now a shockingly common invasive species in some areas and odds seem good it is actively promoting wildfires.
Often lower that it could be expected, because wildfires are just a crime, and to understand crimes you must follow the money.
Eucaliptus plantations are --often-- [1] spared in wildfires, because: they have a proprietary (that could know the arsonist), aren't valuable wood to furniture (are useless as cheap smoked wood), resprout soon, and wouldn't be turned into pastures in any case. The arsonist can't benefit economically of it in any way, and could made some undesirable enemies.
[1] Often but not always. Last years the traditional reasons have mutated. Criminals had started to target Eucaliptus just for creating chaos or economical damage. As scapegoat to blame them for their own crimes, there is often a previous campaign to paint a target on the tree by ecological reasons and blame Eucaliptus in the media as alien species, etc... not much later, half of Portugal starts burning a Saturday at 3am.
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> It has been cultivated around the world, making a new home in southern Europe, South America, parts of Africa, the west coast of the United States, and even parts of South-East Asia.
> But there is now a debate over whether this tree has been worth the industry and habitat it provides.
I moved to Australia in 1988. Nobody, not one Australian I know has ever said eucalyptus was a sensible export as live wood, or was suitable for planting like this in these countries. I can't work out who did think this was a good idea.
So the "now there is a debate" thing is like WTF? The first time I heard about wildfire in Californian eucalyptus there was a pretty strong man-in-the-pub debate about what happened. And that was over a decade ago.
When you get stands of gum (eucalyptus) trees, you also get fast spreading tree-top fires since the living leaves of gum burn ferociously. Gum trees in urban areas or non-native areas are bad, bad news.
Obviously there are significant negative externalities, and when it spreads in the wild and sets the countryside on fire every summer governments might regret allowing anyone to plant it, but that doesn't make putting in a blue gum plantation any less tempting.
Well, I'd very definitely agree with that comment. I have firsthand experience of eucalyptus trees and bushfires and I find it truly perplexing why people in other countries would want to put their lives and property at risk by planting this dangerous invasive species that often grows faster and more robustly there than it does in Australia.
I grew up in a very fire-prone part of Australia in the Blue Mountains in New South Wales west of Sydney and I've lived through some of the most devastating fires. At the end I've posted a link to a YouTube video of a fire I was caught up in as a kid. It was many decades ago but I still have vivid memories of the event. It's impossible to forget witnessing over a hundred homes and businesses burn down as the fire raged through the township.
Unless one's been caught up in a raging bushfire it's almost impossible to visualize what it's really like, especially one involving eucalyptus trees, the roaring noise is almost deafening and suddenly trees just explode when the eucalypt oil ignites. It can be very frightening.
Luckily, my parents' home wasn't in the path of the fire it being several kilometers away but I saw the aftermath and I helped out with bringing bedding and provisions to the poor souls who'd lost their homes and possessions—many had lost everything. It was a truly pitiful sight to see so many people crammed into the town hall floor space of the next town with hardly a footstep between them.
The video is quite long, about 30 min, and of course it's a revisited historical video so the camera footage isn't a vivid as one expects nowadays. Nevertheless, it depicts the human loss very well indeed. When I first saw the video some years back I could feel myself reliving the event, it was quite uncanny and unsettling. Incidentally, in the video one gets a quick glimpse of that town hall where the victims were temporarily rehoused.
From images of recent fires across the globe that have involved eucalyptus trees, it seems to me we ought to be severely limiting these foreign plantings. I recall years ago, when I first went to California and saw that the eucalyptus trees grew better there that in many parts of Australia I was horrified. From my experience it was clear to me what was going to happen there.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=MfYOVnmkP0c
Trees that grow fast and robustly are great for developments! After you've bulldozed everything flat, built up homes of ticky-tacky, you've got to put trees in, and larger trees makes the development feel established; therefore trees that get large quickly are desirable. Building around existing trees is harder, if there even were any of size.
IIRC, eucalyptus will be happy to grow pretty close together, and you can have a line of them for a windbreak, and/or to soften highway noise.
Danger is for someone else to worry about. And cleaning up the tree droppings will fall on the homeowners association.
Obviously it's less likely to be thought a good idea now that we better understand the downsides, but the article this thread links to mentions ten times a pretty notable example of somebody who thought it was a good idea: Ferdinand Jacob Heinrich von Mueller, the first director of the Melbourne Botanic Gardens. FTA:
> "Von Mueller would send visiting botanists home with seeds and mail them to other correspondents in his network, always championing the benefits of the tree as he saw them."
and
> "Von Mueller had hoped the eucalyptus would reforest areas of Europe where native vegetation had been stripped away"
At every step, unwise or excessive displays of trade power, with exotic animals, plants and possessions, were used and wielded for relative social status, along with actual utility.
I imagine that the Australian Gum tree fits into that pattern.
Australians generally, these days, know that eucalyptus are dangerous but Australians didn't generally, as a culture, get recognized by their peers for great management of their unique eco-system during the formative periods of the nation, for good reason - and indeed Australians themselves had to learn a lot about the native flora, having ignored completely the original occupants own vast and valuable knowledge.
It is only relatively, recently rediscovered knowledge, all this talk of ecosystem management being healthy in the southern land, particularly with fire. Australias atrocious recent fires were a result of a complete lack of management even in the home grounds of the eucalyptus and other firey species.
Australia is a land of many eco-management mistakes and lessons, and even still much great ignorance. Australians are waking up to this.
But just so its clear, Aussies don't really do land management great. The assumption that there would be sensibilities about the spread of invasive species is a bit naive. Australia has vast contrasts in this regard, throughout its culture and indeed history. And, alas, industry.
>California
Having lived quite some halcyon years in California, I got very accustomed to the welcome site (and smell) of the eucalyptus among those golden purple hills and valleys .. and alas, it wasn't until the first real fires I saw there, that I understood what a foolish thing it was, indeed, to let landscape gardeners plant things for which they really, really didn't understand. But hey, that's California in a nutshell: the ball-python crammed palm tree I once saw catch fire one night, producing an awesome parade of flaming rat and weed and snake showering down on the brand new Miata of a colleague, was also kind of a wake-up call.
We (particularly, Australians[1]) have inherited the technical debt of poor ecosystem management, and need to refactor. Plant and encourage native species, always - and deter the intruders.
[1] - Although in Australias case, there is much immense knowledge to be rescued, alas, were we actually a bit more cognizant of that value and gave the original gardners their voice back.
https://www.kqed.org/news/11644927/eucalyptus-how-california...
It needs fire to reproduce* and takes over the landscape after a fire, outcompeting many other species. This is not unique to eucalyptus. Some pines also need fire to reproduce and redwoods tend to survive fire better than other trees and thrive in the aftermath.
But it sounds like eucalyptus may actively promote fire in a way I haven't heard of other trees doing.
* http://learnline.cdu.edu.au/units/env207/ecology/individual....
Apparently it turns into an ember-spraying fuel-air bomb when it catches fire. I’m not sure you could design a more fire-promoting tree.
[0]: https://www.gardeningknowhow.com/ornamental/trees/eucalyptus...
Often lower that it could be expected, because wildfires are just a crime, and to understand crimes you must follow the money.
Eucaliptus plantations are --often-- [1] spared in wildfires, because: they have a proprietary (that could know the arsonist), aren't valuable wood to furniture (are useless as cheap smoked wood), resprout soon, and wouldn't be turned into pastures in any case. The arsonist can't benefit economically of it in any way, and could made some undesirable enemies.
[1] Often but not always. Last years the traditional reasons have mutated. Criminals had started to target Eucaliptus just for creating chaos or economical damage. As scapegoat to blame them for their own crimes, there is often a previous campaign to paint a target on the tree by ecological reasons and blame Eucaliptus in the media as alien species, etc... not much later, half of Portugal starts burning a Saturday at 3am.
They stood out like sore thumbs, they dont fit the look of the environment but dayum they were HUGE.
https://craigmitchell.me/eucalyptus-biomass/
https://biomassmagazine.com/articles/3620/the-business-of-gr...
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/355821434_Character...
Truly a fascinating plant.
https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/17573655-trees-in-par...
It completely dries out wetlands. And they also release a chemical into the surrounding soil which kills native competitors.
"I can't do that, Dave."