Eucalyptus globulus Labill.
Native to south-eastern Australia and a few surrounding islands, eucalyptus is a genus of some 700 different species of flowering tree and shrub. Eucalyptus globulus Labill. (hereafter eucalyptus) is the genus’s most prolific, and most cosmopolitan, pioneer, with a wider area of cultivation than any other. It is known globally as one of the major “tree immigrants” of the postwar period1, and is amongst the most widely planted . Despite neither being the tallest, nor offering the best quality timber, it was the prodigious growth [1][2] of this particular eucalypt that would soon make it one of the foremost plantation species2. It’s also one of the most invasive, a designation it has been given in 7 out of 15 of its cultivated regions3.
Many know eucalyptus for their citrusy scent, their blue-green leaves and colourful, peeling bark. But they are equally known for their love of fire. In plant science, they are referred to as pyrophytes, meaning phytos (plants) that have adapted to tolerate pyros (fire), or indeed need it for reproduction4. Their leaves, which court fire through the production of flammable oils, are known to literally explode upon contact with fire. The same oil gives rise to their “selfish” reputation, which lend the tree an allelopathic quality when they cover the forest floor, inhibiting the growth of other species.
The first Eucalyptus seeds to depart their native Australia are said to have been carried by Sir Joseph Banks, the botanist charged with populating the King’s Royal Gardens at Kew with a collection of exotic plants from around the world. In 1768 he had set off on the maiden voyage of the infamous Captain Cook’s HMS Endeavour5, landing on the shores of what would come to be known as Botany Bay, in New South Wales, in 1770. Seeds collected by local Aboriginal folk left a newly-‘discovered’ Australia in 1771 on the return voyage of Captain Cook’s infamous HMS Endeavour. Banks brought back the first specimens of Eucalyptus to Europe, which were planted at Kew 1774, though it was not until 1788 that Eucalyptus was named as such by French botanist Charles-Louis L’Heritier de Brutelle6. Thence began the deterritorialisation of one Land7, and the reterritorialisation of another. The Land that bore Eucalyptus was a meshwork of entangled relations, between wind and wildfire, Dreams and memories, alongside plants, animals, spirits and people.
Before long, living plants were being shipped back to the metropole at quantity, and in specially-designed boats resembling ‘floating gardens’8, to the gardens at Kew, where they were studied, categorised and disseminated around Europe and the colonial world. The dissemination of exotic seeds and seedlings these voyages facilitated marked the emergence of a new imperial botany, within which the categorisation and transportation of newly discovered organisms was drawn into an increasingly globalised project of modernisation9, which would further fuel the geographical rearrangements of organisms catalysed by the earlier Columbian exchange.
These early voyages were about mapping natural resources so as to be able to tap them for wealth accumulation. However, they were also about understanding how plants originated and grew in different environments, in order to grow them elsewhere, at scale (and, of course, for profit). As with cartography in the century that followed, imperial botanical science played a key role in the colonial enterprises of the long 18th, prefiguring in vital ways the proliferation of plantations, and processes of plantation unworlding, that would soon follow apace. The exchange of seeds these voyages facilitated marked the emergence of a new imperial botany, within which the categorisation and transportation of newly discovered organisms was drawn into an increasingly globalised project of modernisation10, which would further fuel the geographical rearrangements of organisms catalysed by the earlier Columbian exchange. And as with this earlier exchange, the consequences of such a project could not always be predicted or foreseen by the scientific and technological frameworks that guided these changes.
Spurred on by outbreaks of dysentery and scurvy on the fetid ships, the Irish-born surgeon Dennis Considen who, some 22 years after Banks, sailed with the First Fleet – those 11 initial British ships, carrying convicts and colonists to from Portsmouth to Botany Bay in New South Wales – was the first to distill the plant’s leaves.
Considen would later become famous for his distillation of eucalyptus leaves to treat the settlers of the newly founded penal colonies. The kinnotannic acid of the Red Gum, known locally as ‘kino,’ was mixed in an alcohol solution and used to treat wounds of both colonists and convicts alike11. Such medicinal usage of eucalyptus was preceded, of course, by indigenous folk, for whom kino, as well as the inhalation of the smoke emitted from burning its leaves had long been, and indeed continues to be12, a remedy for cold and flu. A sample of the oil was soon sent to Banks13, and who had also been in communication with Considen.
It is likely that the ship that, seeds and living specimens in tow, brought Considen back to England had, on its outbound journey, carried with them a different kind of seed, one whose germination would herald the birth of a nation, and the slow and often gruesome death of another.
Eucalyptus, like coffee, palm oil and sugarcane, would become part of an imperial army that would aid settlers in colonising far away lands. In this early period, the species’ biological traits – prodigious growth, it’s ability to resprout after cutting, adapatibility to different environments – became entangled with the symbolism and ideology of the ruling power, entrained to the development projects of the times. In India, plantations of eucalyptus would be used as a political technology to proletarianise indigenous folk (ref), while in Ireland, eucalyptus’ insatiable thirst had led to it being used to drain boggy areas, priming land for development. Similarly, in California, this trait led to its designation as the “miracle tree” by settlers for its role in reducing the incidence of malaria14. Like the sylvan contingent of an imperial army, the tree was lauded for its ability to make “the environment more habitable for settler colonists”15. Elsewhere, in Spain, globulus became known as “the tree of the future,” embodying the aspirations of a nation on a path to Progress.
[1] A study of its growth in a plantation over a 6 year period back in the late 19th century found globulus to grow an average of 49.5 feet, versus the 17 feet of maritime pine (Kinney, 1895, p. 15).
[2] The proliferous nature of eucalyptus had already been noted by the 19th century, with “spontaneous” growth already having been observed.
- Kardell et al., 1986 ↩︎
- Warren, 1962 ↩︎
- Deus et al., 2019 ↩︎
- Oele, 2020 ↩︎
- Warren, 1962, p. 38 ↩︎
- Clarke & Tsing, 2022 ↩︎
- Rathore & Nollet, 2017 ↩︎
- Silva-Pando & Pino-Pérez, 2016 ↩︎
- Goodman, 2016 ↩︎
- Sharrad, 2007, p. 36 ↩︎
- Sharrad, 2007, p. 36 ↩︎
- Brasier, 2010 ↩︎
- Vuong, Chalmers, Jyoti Bhuyan, Bowyer, & Scarlett, 2015 ↩︎
- Davis, 2002 ↩︎
- Clarke & Tsing, 2022 ↩︎
The Tree with a Thousand Faces 