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3 
MEANING OF EUCALYPTUS. 
THE GENUS EUCALYPTUS 
SECTION I. 
DISCOVERY AND ELUCIDATION 
OF THE GENUS. 
When Eucalyptus trees were first discovered by civilized men they were 
restricted to Australia, Tasmania, New Guinea, and a few outlying localities. 
There are now extensive and valuable plantations of them in South Europe, 
North and South Africa, India, California, Florida, Brazil, and New Zealand. 
In all the Australian States the hardwood timber market is still supplied from 
the natural Eucalyptus forests. The necessities of settlement, followed too often 
by waste and neglect, have very seriously depleted those forests; but efforts are 
now in progress in several of the States to conserve and reproduce the best of the 
species on as extensive a scale as present circumstances will permit. 
The Eucalypts are included by botanists in the great natural family to which 
the myrtles belong—the Myrtaceae. Their nearest kindred are found in another 
Australian genus called Angophor'a. In manner of growth and general appear¬ 
ance the Angophoras are indeed so much like the Eucalypts that we often 
cannot positively distinguish them until we examine their flowers and fruit. 
Kindred a little more remote are the very beautiful and valuable genera named 
Tristania and Syncarpia also indigenous to Australia. If we seek very distant 
relations, we may find them in our own country in the rata and pohutukawa 
(Metrosideros) and in the manuka (Leptospermum). 
Eucalyptus trees were noted and recorded as a distinct and very remarkable 
group by the scientists who accompanied Captain Cook; but the honour of giving 
them their generic definition and name was reserved for a Frenchman named 
L’Heritier de Brutelle, who worked, not amongst the trees in Australia, but upon 
material that British botanists had collected and carried to London. Botanical 
names have not always been wisely selected, but the choice made b^ L Heritier 
in this case was a happy one. The word Eucalyptus is a Latinized Greek com¬ 
pound made up of the adverb cu, well, and the verbal adjective kaluptos from 
kaluyto, which means “I cover” or “envelop.” Eucalyptus thus means well- 
covered and we see its appropriateness when we learn that it was suggested by 
the peculiar structure of the floral bud common to all members of the genus 
Instead of the stamens and anthers and style and stigma being sheathed with 
sepals and petals as in an ordinary flower they are completely covered by an 
undivided cap or lid. When the organs within are mature this covering or oper¬ 
culum is pushed off and falls away, leaving an apetalous (non-petalous) flower. In 
some cases there is a thin outer mantle over the operculum, which falls away 
previously or at the same time. Instead of this undivided cap or hd the several 
species of Angophora and other close kindred of the genus have distmct petals. 
C. 
