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It’s spring, but many street trees look stressed and sick. Heat and insect attack are arriving early. But our cities are also steadily losing canopy cover.
Chris Taylor/Author provided
Victoria’s iconic mountain ash forests are reeling from decades of logging and fire. They’re not recovering on their own.
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Australia’s bushfire response relies on foreign satellites, which are not designed to assess our highly flammable eucalypt-clad landscapes.
Collection of timber samples from the Powerhouse Museum’s historic collection, 1886-1932.
Zan Wimberley
Eucalyptusdom is a testament to the utilitarian and cultural life of a remarkable tree.
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When a plant is stressed, it mobilises its resources and often converts its starch reserves back to sugar. As soon as this happens, the stressed plant becomes sweeter than its healthier neighbours.
Steve Pearce/The Tree Projects
These trees are too important to be destroyed in the name of the forestry industry. This is why my husband Steve Pearce and I climb, explore and photograph them.
Eucalypt seeds don’t fall far from the tree, meaning repopulating large areas of forest will be difficult.
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The nature of our fires is changing rapidly, and the adaptation of our plants and animals won’t be able to keep pace.
The red gum, or Eucalyptus camaldulensis Dehnh.
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Understanding invasive trees’ ecology and history is crucial to developing effective management practices.
The tree is thought to be the oldest remnant of a once substantial red gum forest in the region.
AAP
This massive red gum has stood for 300 years, as if in defiance of the modern world and the development that has encircled it.
Distinctive pigmentation patterns around the nostrils allows people on the ground to reliably recognise individual koalas.
Ben Moore
Did you know koalas rub noses to say hello?
Tim Collins classifying a new species of eucalyptus tree, Eucalytus dalveenica, March 2019.
University of New England, Author provided (No reuse)
There are more than 850 different species of eucalypts in Australia, and possibly many more we don’t know about.
“Vic Stockwell’s puzzle”: a close but anciently separated relative of the eucalypts.
Frank Zich
Stockwellia has links back to the epoch before Australia separated into its own continent and was mostly covered in rainforest.
Dr Michael Whitehead is campaigning to rename the Gimlet Gum to the Sexy Gum.
Author provided (No reuse)
The Instagram-able Eucalyptus salubris, better known as the Gimlet Gum, is well worth getting off the beaten track for.
In Australia you can have any tree you want, as long as it’s a eucalypt.
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Eucalypts have been in Australia for 45 million years. But hundreds of species appeared more recently than previously thought.
Wes Mountain/The Conversation
It takes a eucalyptus tree more than a hundred years to develop hollows suitable to shelter Aussie animals, and just moments to cut it down.
The Eucalyptus obliqua as seen in Merthyr Park, Tasmania.
Cowirrie/Flickr, CC BY-SA
One of the great Australian trees – messmate stringybark, Eucalyptus obliqua.
Australian plants leave a unique pollen signature in our honey.
Renee/Flickr
Australia’s distinctive native plants give our honey a distinctive stamp. Welcome to melissopalynology: the study of pollen.
Koalas spend a large part of the day sleeping - while their digestive enzymes get to work.
emmanueleragne/flickr
The koala genome, published today, gives us new and valuable information to aid conservation of this marsupial. It identifies special genes that evolved to adapt the koala to its unique lifestyle.
Mature trees have horizontal branches that are attractive to wildlife and birds.
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The ecological value of old trees is irreplaceable for native Australian fauna. Identifying and preserving these trees in cities through smarter planning strategies is important for local wildlife.
CSIRO via Wikipedia
The majestic Eucalyptus regnans stands far above its forest brethren.