New year's rainbow (gum)

The bark of the Rainbow Gum does not always contain all, or most, of the colours of the rainbow. When young, and at various times of year, it is mostly green and brown, with perhaps a peeling outer layer of red. Pretty enough but hardly living up to its name.

And yes, I've blogged on this species before. New Year's Eve is as bad as Christmas Eve for a blogger. Do you post something clever and connected, or something completely different (perhaps to express you nonconformity or individuality of thought).

Last week I (be)laboured the Christmas Bell association. Today I simply take a celebratory approach. I like the Rainbow Gum, I've been known to say its my favourite tree, and I saw some new (to me) plantings during the year at Kings Park in Perth.

No need to go into the full story of Eucalyptus deglupta; that, you can find in my 2014 post. Here I'll simply provide some additional remarks, framed by my pictures from Kings Park and Botanic Garden in September 2019.

Finding this species in the collection at Kings Park is surprising. Firstly they have an almost exclusively Western Australian flora focus for their collection. There are some outliers, left over from earlier philosophies such as extending to South Africa, or anything goes.

However there are plantings of non-WA plants at the periphery of the botanic garden and this collection of half a dozen Rainbow Gums is behind the Administration Building, away from more popular viewing areas and merging into the more cosmopolitan plantings of the fringing parkland.

The other surprise, perhaps, is that it grows reasonably well here. The soil is sandy and the climate Mediterranean rather than Tropical. We do grow it in Melbourne Gardens, but only just, with one of three saplings planted out a few years ago surviving. It doesn't seem to like our winters, or possums. Perhaps both are milder in the west.

These specimens, after about seven years growth, are a little broader than ours, which tends to grow upwards between bouts of being knocked back each winter. The leaves are also larger and fleshier. Which might all be something to do with the soil composition and chemistry.

As you may have read in my previous post, the natural range of the species is Indonesia, Papua New Guinea and Philippines (this is the only eucalypt with a natural range crossing the equator into the Northern Hemisphere). It's grown for timber and oils in many tropical countries: e.g. Brazil, Congo, Costa Rica, Cuba, Fiji, Malaysia, Samoa, Solomon Islands, Sri Lanka and China. And I've seen it as an ornamental in California and Brazil.

As I've mentioned before, the leaves don't have as strong eucalyptus-like smell when crushed, or indeed much of an odour at all. Still, the oils seem to be interesting enough to extract and document for potential medicinal use.

In Australia, I know Sydney are keen to grow it in their Royal Botanic Garden, where it should do reasonably well. I expect Brisbane have it at their Mt Coot-tha site, and presumably Darwin in the George Brown Botanic Gardens. Elsewhere, not sure.

I do hope our surviving specimen thrives now that it has survived a few winters. This is how it looked in September this year, and at the moment, in last days of 2019, it looks great. Happy New Year to the Rainbow Gum, and to you dear readers.