Re: Can anyone help identify this tree please

 
kay;931490 Wrote:

Confusingly, some kinds of Eucalyptus are colloquially known as "ash" in
Australia, and "mountain ash" (with no further modifier) refers to
Eucalyptus regnans. See 'Eucalyptus common name to botanical name
cross-reference' (http://tinyurl.com/3ltf6x3 )  But it is not commonly
grown in Britain.  It is the largest Euc of all, and specimens logged in
the 19th century may have been even taller than the tallest Californian
redwoods.  Even more confusingly, the Australians call several other
kinds of native plant "ash" too, like the "blueberry ash" Elaeocarpus
reticulatus.  I guess they were very short of names to give the very
diverse plants they found there.  But I don't think this is E regnans,
leaf wrong, rarely grown here.


I don't think, from the leaf shape, that it is E gunni (cider gum),
either, though from frequency of cultivation it is always the first
guess, probably more gunnii than the rest put together.  I think it is
more likely, among the commoner ones grown here, to be perriniana,
nipophila or pauciflora. And I expose myself as a bit of a Euc duffer
that I can't distinguish those by leaf alone.  Given the large size and
market availability, probably more likely the first.  But identifying
eucs is very difficult, even if you are less of a duffer than me. There
is one euc I have been going past twice a day for the last 10 years, and
I still don't know what it is - certainly one of the less commonly grown
ones. Because on the one hand there are so many species that are so
similar to one another in several details, and on the other hand
individual species are so variable from specimen to specimen.  Also many
species have a juvenile leaf form that is quite different from the
mature form.  There are over a 100 species of Eucs that can be grown in
this country, perhaps even twice that, so our lack of imagination in
growing so many ill-placed E gunni - they look so pretty when little but
soon look out of place where people choose to put them - when there are
so many more appropriate trees that look much better when mature in the
kind of garden locations we have available.


You will find that, unlike a leyland cypress, cutting down a Euc doesn't
kill it. Rather, like a native ash, it encourages it to grow ennumerable
new shoots. You may need chemicals, or persistence, to kill it.


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