Collected E. sideroxylon
Posted: April 8th, 2021, 7:48 am
I wasn't going to post this, since I'm not too confident in the survival of this collection, but I guess even failure could help someone out someday.
I was driving to my local IGA on Sunday for emergency milk (and hot cross buns) supplies when I spotted this eucalypt on an empty block. It's a few metres from a Eucalyptus sideroxylon street tree so I'm assuming it's self-seeded from that. I Googled the address and found the land had been sold in 2014 (with a nice-looking house and front yard), and in 2017 approval was granted for demolition of the house and construction of 2x town houses and consulting rooms. They've done the demo part but no construction yet. Given there was nothing left of the old front garden I'd say this tree started growing after demolition in 2017. It doesn't have any signs of the ironbarky-bark, so I think we can say that four years of ground growing isn't enough time for this to form.
So I did what any sane person would do and went back and dug the tree out. I didn't take any before shots but it was around 1.5m x 1.5m, very bushy and healthy-looking. As expected there was a thick tap root with very few lateral roots.
I exposed the cambium in a few places around the widest part of the lignotuber to hopefully encourage roots to grow there - who knows if that'll work. I've potted it up into a mix of potting mix and pumice, and it's now sitting in a tray of water. Fingers crossed...
I was driving to my local IGA on Sunday for emergency milk (and hot cross buns) supplies when I spotted this eucalypt on an empty block. It's a few metres from a Eucalyptus sideroxylon street tree so I'm assuming it's self-seeded from that. I Googled the address and found the land had been sold in 2014 (with a nice-looking house and front yard), and in 2017 approval was granted for demolition of the house and construction of 2x town houses and consulting rooms. They've done the demo part but no construction yet. Given there was nothing left of the old front garden I'd say this tree started growing after demolition in 2017. It doesn't have any signs of the ironbarky-bark, so I think we can say that four years of ground growing isn't enough time for this to form.
So I did what any sane person would do and went back and dug the tree out. I didn't take any before shots but it was around 1.5m x 1.5m, very bushy and healthy-looking. As expected there was a thick tap root with very few lateral roots.
I exposed the cambium in a few places around the widest part of the lignotuber to hopefully encourage roots to grow there - who knows if that'll work. I've potted it up into a mix of potting mix and pumice, and it's now sitting in a tray of water. Fingers crossed...
