Sometimes slender, ghost-white and shooting straight into the sky, or plump and twisting with heavy branches stretching out wide – Australia's eucalypts are as diverse as they are ubiquitous. It’s no surprise that Noongar botanical ecologist Stephen van Leeuwen describes them as pervasive across every Australian ecosystem – there are more than 700 species of these evergreen flowering plants. “They have been captured in lots of stories that whitefellas tell – The Man from Snowy River and songs – and in cultural stories,” Stephen says. Eucalypts provide firewood, tools, edible grubs, medicine and sweet lollies, Stephen explains, making them culturally significant.
Ashley Hay,, says gum trees are “a shorthand for this place that we call Australia” – but they can also be found all over the world, thanks to botanists who arrived in Australia in the late 1700s and shipped off eucalypt seeds for wood and medicine.
