Give me a home among the gum trees…

Gum trees bear gumnuts, little woody capsules with a pointy lid which open in flowering and which contain the tree’s microscopic seeds. It is the little gumnuts which gave the name ‘eucalyptus’ which comes from latin roots meaning ‘well-lidded’. Not that you would need to find the gumnuts to recognize a gumtree…the eucalyptus oil produced by glands on every leaf fills the air for miles around.

The tallest hardwood is a gumtree. Eucalyptus regnans, the mountain ash, has been recorded at 132.6 metres (435 feet) tall. The height of this specimen was estimated to have been about 146 metres ( 470 feet), but it lost its’ top in a storm. Australia does not presently claim to have the world’s tallest living thing, that honour currently being claimed by an US sequoia softwood at 112 metres, but as it is naturally faster growing and more numerous than the sequoia, Eucalyptus regnans will soon reclaim its crown, so to speak.

Who knew that just one of its little leaves, would make the sweetest present? Only a very special person I am sure.