PUBLIC LECTURE: UWA Albany Public Lecture

Eucalyptus. The name is thoroughly European, a product of the Enlightenment and age of global exploration. The plant is antipodean in origin, predominantly Australian. It is found in many countries today via human agency for commercial or aesthetic purposes. This lecture, based on a book in preparation, aims to explore aspects of Aboriginal and western scientific knowledge systems pertaining to the eucalypts. The object is to synthesize and summarize the burgeoning information available on these trees, mallees and shrubs in a way that pays both due respect to Aboriginal priority and insights, and explores the natural history and naming of eucalypts, together with a novel way of integrating biological and conservation studies into a contemporary scientific research program. Overall I aim to advance understanding about how we might care for and manage eucalypts into the future.

The genus Eucalyptus includes the world’s tallest flowering plants, a few species today soaring 90m above the forest floor, including Western Australia's karri (E. diversicolor). By 2010, some 850 species of eucalypts were recognised, in three genera (758 in Eucalyptus, 93 in Corymbia, and 10 in Angophora), all but 12 endemic to Australia, from the continent-wide river red gum (E. camaldulensis) to single location rarities like south-west Australia’s Mt Misery mallee (E. dolorosa). Another 50 have been described since or recognised but not named, making a current total of 900 eucalypts. World-wide, eucalypts are both revered and reviled. Use of eucalypts in overseas plantations has mixed blessings.

Much-celebrated in its main country of origin, Eucalyptus has been dubbed the universal Australian. There, eucalypts have become the object and backdrop of countless pieces of art and science, of novels and verse, in films and photos. Their hardwood timber has made fortunes from wild harvest and transformed landscapes beyond recognition in exotic plantations. Eucalypt utilization has inspired new industry, mobilized public protests and toppled governments. Eucalypt aromatic oil-filled leaves have restored human health and fed the fury of wildfires. Eucalypts provide habitat, food and shelter for myriad animals, plants and fungi, their roots binding the soil, their leaves converting carbon dioxide into oxygen, their canopies moderating climate and helping replenish the Earth with rainfall. Volatile oils of their pendent leaves emitted during hot summer days create a haze that led to naming the Blue Mountains that flank the Sydney Basin. No other continent is so bedecked and dominated by a single genus of trees across all but its most arid and inhospitable habitats.