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Comment by samatman | Hacker News Reader

California, being a paragon of long-term planning, decided to import the pyrotechnic eucalyptus to the state, thinking it would be a good source of fast-growing lumber of railroad ties.

Welp, turns out eucalyptus makes terrible lumber, is unsuitable for railroad ties, lowers the water table, poisons the native flora, and can spontaneously ignite when sunlight shines on drops of the resin.

Oops!

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Eucalyptus are also known to explode when set on fire. Another Australian flora/fauna that will actively try and kill people.

In my area the eucalyptus was primarily used to create wind breaks and and shaded areas in otherwise wide open barren landscapes. I think maybe there were multiple uses, but agriculture / soil-erosion and sun protection were definitely one of the early ones.

Some species of Eucalyptus I've heard need fire for their seeds to "activate"/germinate. They've also discovered a huge variety of Australian plants in valley's where the fire never reaches (think the Wollemi Pine); where everywhere else is really just eucalyptus. If fire could eventually start in an area you pretty much just have eucalyptus bush everywhere and nothing else.

My non-educated hypotheses is that eucalyptus was a very dangerous weed that uses fire to basically kill everything else around it. It managed to kill via fire every other native Australian plant in the bush expect with the exception of some safe sanctuary spots (close to water, deep valley's where moisture content is higher) many years ago. Some other plants have evolved against this and adapted to fire however (think Australian grass trees).

They did the same thing in Israel. It's PACKED with Eucalyptus trees. They say it was important to "drain swamps and fight malaria", but since then it has spread literally everywhere.

I'm surprised by this mistake because it's rather obvious and I'm not even a botanist.

That's too bad, as eucalyptus trees are some of my favorite, with plenty found in East Bay parks :(

I'm partial to sequoias too, except for the mess they make in the yard.

If you ever get a chance to visit the arboretum at UCLA, they have a lot of labelled eucalyptus trees.

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