Who Eucalyptized Southern California? | KCET
Title
Who Eucalyptized Southern California?
Although the orange and the palm loom large in Southern California's iconography, another imported tree – the eucalyptus – has been almost as prominent a feature of the region's landscape. Eucalypti grace parks and gardens and shade sidewalks and roadways. In many suburbs, long rows of the tree, planted long ago as windbreaks, betray the land's past use for citriculture.
But prior to the 1850s, not a single eucalyptus grew in California, which raises the question: how did this tree, an invader from an alien botanical world, come to tower over so much of the region's streets and green spaces? Who eucalyptized Southern California?
Native to Australia, eucalypts feature leathery leaves and flowers whose petals fuse together to form a cap. In fact, the name of the tree's genus, eucalyptus, refers to this bud, deriving from Greek words meaning "well-covered." Botanists recognize more than 500 distinct species, but California is best acquainted with one: eucalyptus globulus, also known as the blue gum. Eucalyptus globulus, indigenous to Tasmania and southeastern Australia, is instantly recognizable by its minty scent, shimmering leaves, and peeling bark.
Historical accounts vary, but according to tradition the first blue gums arrived in Southern California in 1865, when fur trapper-turned-farmer William Wolfskill planted five specimens outside his house – the Hugo Reid Adobe – on Rancho Santa Anita. An agricultural experimenter who made a fortune growing oranges, walnuts, and wine grapes, Wolfskill must have recognized the eucalyptus' potential to upset the commercial timber market; although conifers grew in the mountains, the lowlands of Southern California were mostly treeless plains, broken by isolated copses of live oak and sycamore. The fast-growing eucalyptus could provide a large, local supply of timber in short order.
Wolfskill never saw his experiment through to its conclusion; though. He sold the ranch in 1872 to Harris Newmark, who later sold it to Elias Jackson "Lucky" Baldwin. (Fittingly, although the original eucalyptus trees no longer shade the historic adobe, Wolfskill's homestead is today part of the Los Angeles County Arboretum.)
Instead, others championed the tree. Ellwood Cooper planted a 200-acre eucalyptus grove near Santa Barbara in 1872. Cooper's "Forest Culture and Eucalyptus Trees," published in 1876, became the standard guidebook for eucalyptus cultivation. Another admirer, Alexander Campbell-Johnston of Garvanza (today part of Highland Park), planted tens of thousands of seedlings and wrote extensively about the eucalyptus' virtues, and in 1875 Robert M. Widney's Forest Grove Association planted a 200-acre grove near Downey.
Encouraged by the trees' boosters, farmers planted eucalypti as windbreaks, and the Southern Pacific briefly (and unsuccessfully) experimented with using eucalyptus wood for its rail ties.
But it was tobacco heir Abbot Kinney who turned a regional fad into a landscape-altering phenomenon. Better known today as the developer of Venice, Kinney served as state forester from 1886 to 1888 and used the position to promote the eucalyptus, distributing free seeds across the state. In 1887, he established a forestry station in Rustic Canyon, near Santa Monica, where he planted numerous species of eucalypti, and in 1895 published a 300-page book about the tree.
Kinney's tome extolled the eucalyptus' virtues as a multi-purpose plant. The tree was well-suited as an ornamental tree or as a windbreak, he wrote, but nearly every part of the plant could also be exploited commercially. Eucalyptus oil, for instance, had powerful antiseptic and anti-malarial properties, he claimed. Today, it's a common ingredient in cough syrup.
The eucalyptus could also transform Southern California's treeless landscape in almost an instant:
In fact, many developers had already learned that the blue gum, which can grow as high as 60 feet in only six years, could quickly overcome the oppressive flatness of new suburban towns. A tree outside the Howard & Smith flower shop at Olive and 9th streets in Los Angeles attained a height of 134 feet before succumbing to a windstorm in 1915.
More Tree History
Kinney's advocacy sparked a new wave of interest in the tree that, fueled by a 1907 U.S. Forest Service warning about a shortage of Appalachian hardwood, soon grew into a speculative bubble in eucalyptus timber. Fantastical rumors of 500-foot eucalypti were repeated as fact. Visions of eucalyptus houses, furniture, telephone poles, and wagons – not to mention immense profits – abounded.
Over the next six years, optimistic farmers planted millions of individual blue gums throughout California; a few months in 1909 alone saw the creation of more than 23,000 acres of new eucalyptus groves. Some farmers even replaced productive fields of vegetable crops with eucalyptus stands, and the Los Angeles Board of Water Commissioners mooted a proposal to plant 25 million trees along the Owens River Aqueduct, then under construction.
The bubble soon burst, however, when a 1913 U.S. Department of Agriculture report confirmed what others had long known: that eucalyptus wood warped, cracked, and twisted as it dried. Investors were ruined, and eucalyptus groves reverted to farmland as steel, concrete, and other artificial materials made up for the hardwood shortage.
Although its future as a cash crop was over, the eucalyptus survived the boom's collapse. Many Southern California landscapers embraced it as an ornamental tree, while farmers and orange growers planted endless miles of eucalypti to protect their crops from the wind. Although concerns about the tree's safety cloud its future – its heavy falling limbs are known to be fatal, while in a fire its oil-rich crowns can become explosive – the eucalyptus remains a fixture of Southern California's arboreal architecture.
Further Reading
Esau, Erika. Images of the Pacific Rim: Australia and California, 1850-1935. Sydney, Australia: Power Publications, 2010.
Farmer, Jared. Trees in Paradise: A California History. New York: W. W. Norton, 2013.
Support the Articles you Love
We are dedicated to providing you with articles like this one. Show your support with a tax-deductible contribution to KCET. After all, public media is meant for the public. It belongs to all of us.
Keep Reading
-
Discover eight dazzling fountains that help define Los Angeles.
-
After the screening, KCET Cinema Series host Pete Hammond sat down with editor Joel Cox and Supervising Sound Editor Alan Murray.
-
For the last 30 years, El Nopal Press has intentionally been a studio where artists can experiment with printmaking. Some of the most provocative artistic pieces and innovations have come from the studio’s collaborations with women.
-
Enter to win tickets to the December 18 performance of Matthew Bourne’s Swan Lake at the Ahmanson Theatre.
- 1 of 225
- next ›
Full Episodes
-
Lost L.A.
Lost L.A.
S4 E1: Griffith Park - The Untold History
Season 4, Episode 1
Griffith Park is one of the largest municipal parks in the United States. Its founder, Griffith J. Griffith, donated the land to the city as a public recreation ground for all the people — an ideal that has been challenged over the years.
-
Lost L.A.
Lost L.A.
S4 E2: Three Views of Manzanar - Ansel Adams, Dorothea Lange and Toyo Miyatake
Season 4, Episode 2
During World War II, three renowned photographers captured scenes from the Japanese incarceration: outsiders Dorothea Lange and Ansel Adams and incarceree Tōyō Miyatake who boldly smuggled in a camera lens to document life from within the camp.
-
Lost L.A.
Lost L.A.
S4 E3: Bootlegger Tunnels - A Journey Through LA’s Prohibition Lore
Season 4, Episode 3
Prohibition may have outlawed liquor, but that didn’t mean the booze stopped flowing. Explore the myths of subterranean Los Angeles, crawl through prohibition-era tunnels, and visit some of the city’s oldest speakeasies.
-
Lost L.A.
Lost L.A.
S4 E4: Paul Revere Williams - An African-American Architect in Jet-Age L.A.
Season 4, Episode 4
Although best known for designing the homes of celebrities like Lucille Ball and Frank Sinatra, the pioneering African-American architect Paul Revere Williams also contributed to some of the city’ s most recognizable civic structures.
-
Lost L.A.
Lost L.A.
S4 E5: Discovering the Universe - Exploring the Cosmos Atop Mount Wilson
Season 4, Episode 5
As recently as a century ago, scientists doubted whether the universe extended beyond our own Milky Way — until astronomer Edwin Hubble, working with the world’s most powerful telescope discovered just how vast the universe is.
- 1 of 5
- next ›
Comments