Blue Gum Trees in Canterbury.

Cromwell Argus, Volume II, Issue 98, 26 September 1871, Page 7

Blue Gum Trees in Canterbury.

[Prom the Canterbury Press.] At tho monthly meeting of the Christchurch Horticultural Society, held on tho 7th instant, Mr W. Wilson delivered a very interesting lecture on the “ Bine Gum.” The tree (he said) was introduced into Canterbury about seventeen years ago, by either Dr Earl or Dr Barker. Dr Earl’s trees are perhaps a month older than those of Dr Barker. A short time after the planting of these trees, a quantity of seed was imported from Australia by A- Templar, at the instance of Mr G. H. Glenmark, and was sold at twenty guineas a pound. He (Mr Wilson) had paid twenty guineas for only nine ounces of the seed. The Blue Gum is a very robust tree, and those in Dr Barker’s garden have now a circumference of 7ft Gin. The tree may be cultivated by various means, but it is best to grow it from seed. It may be safely transplanted when six or eight weeks old, but not when older. It surpasses all other trees in rapidity of growth, and resists frost better than most of them. It will grow anywhere on the plains of Canterbury, but probably not so well in groat altitudes; and as a means of shelter it is superior to any other tree, owing to its quick - grnwiag quality. The trees that are now growing in and around Christchurch have greatly modified the climate. Before they were planted the winters used to be more severe, and the summers more dry ; and the summer heats scorched the paddocks and the hill-sides, for the rain-c'ouds would divide, and pour down their genial showers only on the hills and the mountains. But now their burthen descends on the plains, lessening the heat, and increasing the moisture of the earth and atmosphere, and nuking the Province a more pleasant place to dwell in. And to this great change no tree has contributed so much as the Blue Gum. . . . There are gum trees growing in a garden near Christchurch which have reached a height of 70ft and a girth of from oft to oft 4in in fourteen years. The seed of the trees around his own garden in Christchurch was sown fourteen years ago. Seven years before that time there was nothing higher than the herbaceous tutu within three or four miles of Christchurch ; but the tutu has disappeared, like the native grasses, and its place has been supplied chiefly with Blue Gum, the effect of which on the landscape has not been less remarkable than on the climate of the city. In Tasmania the tree has reached a height of 300 ft, and a girth of at least -loft. At the Great Exhibition in London, in 1831, the Tasmanians exhibited a plank from this tree 185 ft lung, and Gin thick. No ship could be got long enough to carry tho plank whole, so it had to be cut in two, and the parts joined together again in London