The Complex Relationship We Have with Trees 1

Eucalyptus trees inspire a certain reverence and rage when discussed. Almost no one interviewed to date has been issue neutral on these trees. Those against note the water sucking, plant-destroying root systems, how quickly they proliferate, how they blow up like bombs when ignited in forest fires. Those who adore the trees often comment on their sound and smell...As it turns out, people have had a curiously complex relationship with these trees for some time.


From the Notebook:
Why Blue Gums Were Brought to California

Trees of the genus Eucalyptus from Australia were spread widely and numerously through California after the 1850's.
Several factors favored their spread, notably the production of timber and fuel, often with unrealistic hopes of financial gain. Planting for windbreaks and decorative purposes was also commonplace. An important and overlooked additional reason for the rapid dissemination of eucalypts in California, especially in the 1870's and 1880's, was the belief that trees of this genus, particularly Eucalyptus globulus or blue gum, could prevent or diminish the serious malaria problem that beset portions of the state.
That certain forms of vegetation, especially trees, represented sanitary influences was an ancient notion and it survived even the germ theory of disease. The supposed method whereby eucalypts achieved their healthful influence was through the trees' imagined capacity to absorb or neutralize the noxious gases that were believed to cause malaria. This erroneous and antique miasmatic etiology of malaria, together with belief in eucalypt prophylaxis, was demolished in the late nineteenth century when it was revealed that the disease was caused by blood parasites transmitted by the bites of anopheline mosquitoes.
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35 The Pacific Rural Press, May 16, 1874, p. 20.

Meanwhile, similar comments were appearing in the authoritative British scientific journal Nature: "The subject of the introduction of the eucalyptus as a sanitary agency in fever-stricken countries has of late been so much talked about that some authoritative preliminary inquiries have been made with the view of planting Eucalyptus globulus on a large scale in Mauritius;"Nature, June 11, 1874, p. 112. "…the Italian government, following the course that it has already adopted on previous occasions, will gratuitously distribute this year 5,000 plants of the Eucalyptus globulus, for cultivation in the Agro Romano, especially in the spot infected by malaria;"Nature, April 1, 1875, p. 436.