Nah, eucalyptus trees are a pain. They suppress plants under them with a heavy and constant leaf drop behavior and their leaves take a long time to decay. They alter the soil chemistry to further achieve this goal. You never see anything growing under them in the wild, only if man is manually collecting the leaves e.g. by mowing. They self amputate limbs abruptly which is a hazard and are ofc quite flammable. Take it from an Australian, you don't want them. Get rid of them.
These are all practical, common-sense arguments for yea or nay on a particular species. They seem like exactly the kinds of factors to consider - not whether this exact plant existed in this exact microclimate, at one pre-European moment in botanical time.
I've got no opinion on eucalyptus one way or the other. But if I was developing one, these are the points I'd take into account.
Yes I really agree with her sentiments, the group think native is best manages to penetrate and insert itself as the ideal all should aspired to enact. It's a sorry sad fact that in my local (Northern part of Queensland, Australia) such thinking finally killed off one its main volunteer land management groups, without even a real good bye, they seem to have come to an end last year, no more media releases or group activities as far as I can tell. I used to read their monthly literature release leaflets and had at some point planned to pick their brains on a small project I had in mind. Looking around their usual spot in the town's library is now occupied with leaflets from I guess a fork of the original, a local native plant group.
Permaculturalist have long had the problem with native is best thinking. [1] The group think is also a distraction to real problems and threats facing some strips of land and environment. The noise over one coconut tree in a national park drowns out the poor weed management rife in some National Parks, but that's a problem that's been two or three decades in the making, money as well as direction ... frankly the govt depts responsible don't want to hear about mobs of feral pigs uprooting everything along streams, nor the lantana growing unchecked (though scrub turkeys no doubt do well under it,) nor any mention of a fungus that's taking down the established big trees in some areas which were unwittingly contaminated.
As for eucalyptus species, there's a wide range of tree types, some aren't too bad and a grove of them stays relatively tidy, other species around my parts called Blue Gum and Poplar are two species which are painful for limb drop and always a surprise for the unsuspecting farm hand slashing long grass with a tractor in a paddock containing such trees. My area typically doesn't have much issue with wild fires, though poor forest management, poor fire management and procedural management has greatly (over ten fold would be my guess) increased those risks.
Thank you for all this info. I'd never heard of permaculture, it's fascinating. Lots of food for thought here. I found a link on the Million Trees website to an org called Landcare in Australia - was that the one that went dormant in your area? Their approach was very thought-provoking.
I've been a casual botanist for around 25 years, mostly slow observation and trial-and-error IDs. You learn a lot, just looking at stuff. It was around 2008 when I first started noticing the native-is-best, alien-is-bad drumbeat. At first it was just disturbing, feeling this value judgment of good-plant bad-plant, creeping into my observational process. It took some of the pleasure out of it TBH.
Now it just seems out of control, the wholesale scapegoating, ripping-out, and poisoning of acres of benign species, without a clear plan of what to replace them with. And the absence of context, not weighing the huge ecological disturbance of things like highways and dams, plus feral pigs and aggressive weeds as you mentioned, just seems, I dunno, simplistic.
I love native plants as much as the the next person. I've got a huge native garden. And I'm all for eradicating aggressive bullies like English ivy and kudzu.
But the ecosystem's complicated. We're in a looming extinction event. Gazing backward into a mythical native-plant Eden just seems ... wishful?
Thanks for sharing your perspective, it's validating.
The Landcare movement is pretty solid having good support from government.
I'm embarrassed to say I can't recall the actual small regional group's name, even though I have over the last 20 years or so read their pamphlets when I see them. They had work group events a couple times a month too, that would visit beaches and stream and help rehabilitate it by removing the declared problem weeds. My browser's search history doesn't help there either despite I searched after their literature went absent and remained quiet and found the group was amiss, needing or requesting someone to fill positions of chairperson and a number of other top tier positions.
The native is best movement started in earnest in my region where I was conscious of the push at the end of the 90s. I guess that matches the time a big spotlight was being shone on big bad ag industry, in what I consider simply a move to shift the blame for loss of diversity along the state's streams and beach front areas which have been heavily developed the last 30 years - it's a madness (building in those areas) to put it politely. My state was at the time, pushed into a position they had to address tree clearing problem (but lets ignore the spaces around heavy population, so developers can do their thing ... besides that is not near water catchment that flows into the lower states ...) by the acting federal govenment and they did so by creating a map of environmental zones which IMHO wasn't particularly accurate and somewhat silly in that one couldn't get a straight answer why one unremarkable piece of ground was marked as high environmental importance when much of the area around it was the same.
I think any outlook, natives or not, should be case by case considering as many important factors as one can. Erosion and fire hazard in a dry area would by why some might dislike the variety of eucalyptus growing. Oh yes, for running water, many dry forest eucalyptus are not so good against water erosion and it's where grass varieties might be better. Then again I've got no idea how they compare to other trees from the US or the region in particular.
When it comes to removal of problem vegetation, the worry is when what seems like a practical solution is applied everywhere since it's cost effective, more often the solution are nasty herbicides that are pervasive in the environment and applied at quantity with little real thought. I particularly worry about Metsulfuron Methyl and similar which are effective at a few grams per acre for killing woody plants. I suspect I've seen that damage first hand where some idiot dumped the remains of a half used bottle in a stream and proceeded to kill a third of a mile of river oaks downstream. Though I have no proof, the coastal region to the south of me supposedly had an issue with Diuron, there was much gnashing of teeth over its use ... I'd noted the dry formulation did not have enough solvent, it seemed to mix in water but a lot of it was merely going into colloidal suspension, meaning many farmers were not getting the true benefit and much of it could have washed off and into streams and later dissolving in the presence of eucalyptus type oils from leaf matter - I felt fortunate a couple years later that I'd not had a chance to get up on a soap box to explain why it was a problem though poor application, when I was informed a federal or state supported water catchment group approx 200 miles south again, had used approx 90 tonnes one year (I believe the source / person who relayed some number of truck transports full of diuron had been dispatched there) to spray over not land, but a water based grass weed in the river ... of course no proof apart from knowing the group had controlled a section of river for this pest grass. One realises and could safely assume what didn't enter the plants, simply went out to sea and caught the east coastal current up the coast. It's something that never made t...
Interesting that higher concentrations can be less effective? Did I get that right? Sounds complex. And complexity doesn't always mix well with the virality / popularity of a narrative.
I should mentioned the coastal damage episode in a separate paragraph for clarity. The two herbicides are quite different, one kills woody weeds very effectively at minute amounts, the other is a residual grass type herbicide which can modify the action of other herbicides like paraquat. Sugar cane growing farmers in the region around my locale and to the south, including Mackay and Sarina, in the past frequently used the diuron herbicide mixed with paraquat when cane shoots had regrown a foot or higher after harvest or in plant cane to subdue and kill competitive grasses between the rows of sugar cane. Since most farmers are on a very tight budget it's applied generally in a manner that it stays on target, excess diuron that hits soil will bind with it ... however those using the dry formulation there was a significant risk, undissolved particles that might remained on dead plant material could have been flushed into streams by heavy storms (depending on landscape, more than 2 or 3 inches of rain in a moderately short period) and out to coastal areas. The decline in mangrove health, didn't make much sense to me where the river or outflow areas often didn't seem as affected as other areas ... illegal disposal seemed a better option ... but of course finding out a well funded group were using it to excess and the kicker was not over soil where excess might bind but in fact in a flowing river system, the real culprit seemed very obvious.
Metsulfuron Methyl is part of a family of herbicides that kill woody plants at just a level tablespoon per acre, so one can expect a spill to wreck havoc. I became quite fearful of its use approx end 90s or early 00s after hearing and then reading of an incident reported in South Australia where an accident during its cartage had resulted in spill of the herbicide and subsequent wide area that was damaged. I can not find a reference to that online at the moment.
What I found instead was a report of unintended off target damage, be that spray or other, no quick links specified how the herbicide found its way into the off target trees. [1]
Around 2015 or so I realised that in good weather - appropriate spraying conditions, Metsulfuron Methyl is not very mobile in the soil profile, after someone mistook a near full pound box (half kilo) of the dry formulation herbicide in dissolvable satchels, for a diuron alternative and used the entire box in a spray mix to apply a two foot band over 400 to 500 yards of fence line. I was only informed three or four months later and I immediately went for a sticky beak expecting to see dead trees all around - to my surprise even a couple of new weeds had grown up in the sprayed band, not many but a few ... I made a point of checking for a couple of years to see if any acive product was mobile in the soil and affecting the trees close by. I didn't note any.
8 comments
[ 2.5 ms ] story [ 25.7 ms ] threadI've got no opinion on eucalyptus one way or the other. But if I was developing one, these are the points I'd take into account.
Permaculturalist have long had the problem with native is best thinking. [1] The group think is also a distraction to real problems and threats facing some strips of land and environment. The noise over one coconut tree in a national park drowns out the poor weed management rife in some National Parks, but that's a problem that's been two or three decades in the making, money as well as direction ... frankly the govt depts responsible don't want to hear about mobs of feral pigs uprooting everything along streams, nor the lantana growing unchecked (though scrub turkeys no doubt do well under it,) nor any mention of a fungus that's taking down the established big trees in some areas which were unwittingly contaminated.
As for eucalyptus species, there's a wide range of tree types, some aren't too bad and a grove of them stays relatively tidy, other species around my parts called Blue Gum and Poplar are two species which are painful for limb drop and always a surprise for the unsuspecting farm hand slashing long grass with a tractor in a paddock containing such trees. My area typically doesn't have much issue with wild fires, though poor forest management, poor fire management and procedural management has greatly (over ten fold would be my guess) increased those risks.
[1] https://goodlifepermaculture.com.au/tagasaste-tree-lucerne-f...
I've been a casual botanist for around 25 years, mostly slow observation and trial-and-error IDs. You learn a lot, just looking at stuff. It was around 2008 when I first started noticing the native-is-best, alien-is-bad drumbeat. At first it was just disturbing, feeling this value judgment of good-plant bad-plant, creeping into my observational process. It took some of the pleasure out of it TBH.
Now it just seems out of control, the wholesale scapegoating, ripping-out, and poisoning of acres of benign species, without a clear plan of what to replace them with. And the absence of context, not weighing the huge ecological disturbance of things like highways and dams, plus feral pigs and aggressive weeds as you mentioned, just seems, I dunno, simplistic.
I love native plants as much as the the next person. I've got a huge native garden. And I'm all for eradicating aggressive bullies like English ivy and kudzu.
But the ecosystem's complicated. We're in a looming extinction event. Gazing backward into a mythical native-plant Eden just seems ... wishful?
Thanks for sharing your perspective, it's validating.
I'm embarrassed to say I can't recall the actual small regional group's name, even though I have over the last 20 years or so read their pamphlets when I see them. They had work group events a couple times a month too, that would visit beaches and stream and help rehabilitate it by removing the declared problem weeds. My browser's search history doesn't help there either despite I searched after their literature went absent and remained quiet and found the group was amiss, needing or requesting someone to fill positions of chairperson and a number of other top tier positions.
The native is best movement started in earnest in my region where I was conscious of the push at the end of the 90s. I guess that matches the time a big spotlight was being shone on big bad ag industry, in what I consider simply a move to shift the blame for loss of diversity along the state's streams and beach front areas which have been heavily developed the last 30 years - it's a madness (building in those areas) to put it politely. My state was at the time, pushed into a position they had to address tree clearing problem (but lets ignore the spaces around heavy population, so developers can do their thing ... besides that is not near water catchment that flows into the lower states ...) by the acting federal govenment and they did so by creating a map of environmental zones which IMHO wasn't particularly accurate and somewhat silly in that one couldn't get a straight answer why one unremarkable piece of ground was marked as high environmental importance when much of the area around it was the same.
I think any outlook, natives or not, should be case by case considering as many important factors as one can. Erosion and fire hazard in a dry area would by why some might dislike the variety of eucalyptus growing. Oh yes, for running water, many dry forest eucalyptus are not so good against water erosion and it's where grass varieties might be better. Then again I've got no idea how they compare to other trees from the US or the region in particular.
When it comes to removal of problem vegetation, the worry is when what seems like a practical solution is applied everywhere since it's cost effective, more often the solution are nasty herbicides that are pervasive in the environment and applied at quantity with little real thought. I particularly worry about Metsulfuron Methyl and similar which are effective at a few grams per acre for killing woody plants. I suspect I've seen that damage first hand where some idiot dumped the remains of a half used bottle in a stream and proceeded to kill a third of a mile of river oaks downstream. Though I have no proof, the coastal region to the south of me supposedly had an issue with Diuron, there was much gnashing of teeth over its use ... I'd noted the dry formulation did not have enough solvent, it seemed to mix in water but a lot of it was merely going into colloidal suspension, meaning many farmers were not getting the true benefit and much of it could have washed off and into streams and later dissolving in the presence of eucalyptus type oils from leaf matter - I felt fortunate a couple years later that I'd not had a chance to get up on a soap box to explain why it was a problem though poor application, when I was informed a federal or state supported water catchment group approx 200 miles south again, had used approx 90 tonnes one year (I believe the source / person who relayed some number of truck transports full of diuron had been dispatched there) to spray over not land, but a water based grass weed in the river ... of course no proof apart from knowing the group had controlled a section of river for this pest grass. One realises and could safely assume what didn't enter the plants, simply went out to sea and caught the east coastal current up the coast. It's something that never made t...
Metsulfuron Methyl is part of a family of herbicides that kill woody plants at just a level tablespoon per acre, so one can expect a spill to wreck havoc. I became quite fearful of its use approx end 90s or early 00s after hearing and then reading of an incident reported in South Australia where an accident during its cartage had resulted in spill of the herbicide and subsequent wide area that was damaged. I can not find a reference to that online at the moment.
What I found instead was a report of unintended off target damage, be that spray or other, no quick links specified how the herbicide found its way into the off target trees. [1]
Around 2015 or so I realised that in good weather - appropriate spraying conditions, Metsulfuron Methyl is not very mobile in the soil profile, after someone mistook a near full pound box (half kilo) of the dry formulation herbicide in dissolvable satchels, for a diuron alternative and used the entire box in a spray mix to apply a two foot band over 400 to 500 yards of fence line. I was only informed three or four months later and I immediately went for a sticky beak expecting to see dead trees all around - to my surprise even a couple of new weeds had grown up in the sprayed band, not many but a few ... I made a point of checking for a couple of years to see if any acive product was mobile in the soil and affecting the trees close by. I didn't note any.
[1] https://www.epa.nsw.gov.au/reporting-and-incidents/report-po...