84 

 THE EUCALYPTUS TREES OF CALIFORNIA 



By Jean Broadhurst 



While the palms of California are at first the most novel fea- 

 ture of the landscape to the tourists from eastern or northeastern 

 United States, they, because of our familiarity with that type of 

 vegetation through pictures and the struggling specimens seen 

 in conservatories and even in parlors and roof gardens, soon be- 

 come an almost unnoted part of the general impression that 

 means California. 



The above is not true of the eucalyptus trees or " eucalypts ". 

 as they are beginning to be called — and quite sensibly, too. 

 For those who object to the English plural of cactus would 

 refuse to try similar five-syllabled plural for eucalyptus ; and 

 even the advocates of anglicized spelling must be relieved to 

 learn the simpler three syllabled "eucalypts" for the plural 

 form. The eucalypts, with the erratic and unsymmetrical branch- 

 ing of the tall and rapidly-growing younger trees, are as striking 

 as young ginkgo trees, though they, too, become more symmet- 

 rical as they grow older. Irregular rows of these characteristic 

 trees border the lanes, streets, and fields ; young, blue-gray 

 groves of them cover mistily the distant slopes. Examining them 

 more closely the usual tourist comes away with a hazy idea that 

 the eucalyptus tree is "very easy to tell at a distance, and very 

 difficult to identify when seen close by. The bark scales off, like 

 the buttonwood or sycamore, or in strips like a juniper, or it 

 doesn't come off at all. The leaves are either blue-gray, or dull 

 green ; or both kinds may be found on one tree. The leaves 

 are broad, rounded at the tip, and sessile like the boneset ; or 

 else they are slender, falcate, and long petioled, in which case 

 they have a wholly different position from the broader spreading 

 leaves of the same tree, hanging down in a limp loose-jointed 

 way like the heavy hands of an uncomfortable raw-boned youth. 

 The eucalypts bear curious conical flower bases or fruits which 

 are very aromatic, or they never bear any fruit at all." And so 

 the contradictions continue until one wonders if there is anything 

 the eucalyptus trees may or may not have and yet be eucalyp- 



