Rescuing Blue Gum Eucalyptus sprouts

by James K. Sayre

You may be living where there are active "native plant" religious fanatics whose warped view of the world includes some notion of an static original native plant flora that was at some distant past time untouched (by western or European human culture). Some of these folks will upon occasion, devote part of a weekend to rooting up plants growing in their neighborhood which they have deemed as "alien" or "foreign" or some such other negative pejorative term.

Being a fancier of Eucalyptus and the Blue Gum Eucalyptus (Eucalyptus globulus) in particular, I visited a site that was ravaged a few days before by these nativist fanatics. I rescued some a dozen or so of the Blue Gum sprouts and immediately put their roots into buckets of water. I know from past experience that one-year-old Blue Gums do not take kindly to being transplanted, so I had only a faint hope of reviving these rooted out sprouts that had been lying rooted out for several days (although it was still cool, late winter weather). I planted these sprouts, which measured mostly about one foot high, around my back yard garden. I watered them several times and day and even said a few prayers for them. Some of them never revived, but a few survived their ordeal and sprouted out a new set of leaves within a couple of months.

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Web page last updated on 3 September 2004.