Steve Hopper

And, of course, two million years ago, roughly two and a half million years ago, the Northern Hemisphere Ice Ages started.

And so there was accelerated climatic variation going on, except in places like southwestern Australia.

That was a time when rainforests went extinct in the southwest and it opened up the canopy much more and eucalypts just filled it like you wouldn't believe.

Well, those who were unable to come to Australia scratched their head a lot.

In Australia, the government botanist in Victoria, Ferdinand von Mueller, on the other hand, was a passionate collector, knew the eucalypts in the field, so he could observe all the other characters that don't come with herbarium specimens.

So, you know, how tall is it?

Are the leaves glossy?

what's the colour of the flowers, what's the bud and flower shape like and is it consistent, all those sort of things.

And Mueller named many new species himself and he was passionate about getting eucalypts grown out as economic plants in Europe in particular, but eventually he was

sending massive numbers of seeds of blue gums and the like to Africa, working with people all over the world, California.

Well, he was a very pragmatic German botanist.

In those days, botany was intimately associated with

the days of empire and colony building.

So, you know, Joseph Banks sold to King George III the fact that the Royal Botanic Gardens Kew could have the richest, most diverse collection of world plants, and from that, the most important collection of economically valuable plants too.

So the idea of describing the world's plants was intimately associated with this idea of

Amongst all the new ones, there will be some that are immensely valuable for humans.

And so, you know, things like eucalypts offered fast-growing herbivore-resistant trees, so a ready supply of wood,

And they also grew and still grow in desert-like conditions, so able to be planted in places that previously didn't have any trees at all.

And, you know, the colonial benefits of having such a magic genus was evident to anyone who knew the trees then.

They really get mixed press here.