River Gum, Goldfields, Western Australia Did you know that March 23 was National Eucalyptus Day? I only just discovered this while looking through the CSIRO children’s pages for holiday activities. When I looked back at the newspapers for the 23 rd there was no reference to it, though the ABC did mention it on Australia Day on the 26 th of January. Eucalypts vary greatly in size, their seed capsules, bark and flowers and adult leaves often differ from juvenile ones on the same tree There’s scarcely been a film about Australia that doesn’t feature a gum tree or two and they also provide the hazy blue or olive -green backdrop to our lives. We take them for granted because of their ubiquity and seldom stop to consider how amazing and diverse they are. They cover three quarters of Australia’s forest and woodland and have adapted to almost every niche apart from the deserts, from the tropics to the southernmost parts of Tasmania, from sea level to appr...
Practising Geographer - nature culture places people