Veronika Wild

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...

A disused quarry provides a home for the Tasmanian Bushland Garden near Buckland Getting to the Tasmanian Bushland Gardens takes longer – around 55 minutes from Hobart via the A3 according to my GPS - and much longer if you stop to pick your own strawberries as I did, but entry is free and it’s a lovely rest stop if you happen to be heading up or down the East Coast. Officially opened in 2010 and set in a former quarry this 20 hectare garden was established by volunteers aided by donations from various organisations, to preserve typical East Coast species. Much of the original vegetation has already been lost due to clearing, grazing, forestry activity and other forms of  "progress." I especially liked that plants were not shown in isolation but together with other species with which they commonly occur Although I had probably missed the peak flowering season, this garden was nicely laid out according to different kinds of plant communities – e.g. th...