Twenty years ago the climb to the top in Wilder Ranch State Park ended in a profuse, majestic eucalyptus grove. It was widely known simply as “The Grove.” Like all of California's eucalyptus groves, it had a pungent, alien hush to it that the surrounding redwood forest has never completely understood. Maybe it was the silvery leaves slipping against each other, high in the creaky cover. Maybe it was the pebbly carpet of eucalyptus nuts and shredded bark peelings instead of the rusty duff the surrounding, dense redwood forest provides. Alien.
Whatever inspired California’s first eucalyptus imports c. 1850, by the turn of the twentieth century the fast growing eucalyptus trees were being encouraged for their commercial potential. Compared to native American species, eucalyptus was thought to be a much quicker way of producing, for instance, railroad ties. Harder, faster is always considered by America to be the better, stronger way. Our work is never over.
The plans didn’t work out, though. American eucalyptus just wasn’t up to expectations, so instead of becoming a protected commercial crop like, oh, the strawberries that carpet thousands of square miles of California soaking up whatever viciously biohazardous methyl-ide is the toxin du jour, eucalyptus has frequently been declared an invasive species in need of extermination. Maybe we would have learned to think more kindly of the eucalyptus trees if koalas had been brought to America along with them?
America is a land of invaders. The first people in America invaded it from Asia perhaps as far back as 40,000 years ago. Their population had increased to probably over 100 million before Europeans arrived bringing a hardy crop of diseases that more than decimated Native American numbers with plagues a lack of experience with dense, rat- and flea- infested, filthy cities had never taught them to resist. That, and wanton, gleeful, officially sanctioned by God use of the era’s modern military technology. In most parts of the Americas the native inhabitants weren’t considered as close to being human as the black people profitably imported from Africa, and we know how much respect they got. In the United States killing a Native American was more likely to get you commended than condemned, regardless of how the killing was done, or why. Truly, Europeans did steal the Americas fair and square.
The Grove has been looking pretty sad the past few years. It has had at least one bad fire that miraculously didn’t burn up much of anything else. Eucalyptus, like most trees, recovers from fire well enough, but it seems The Grove, unlike almost every other stand of cursed for growing like weeds eucalyptus trees in California, has lost its vitality. As time passes it just gets sicker and closer to death. For every spectral eucalyptus still standing, there are at least two grisly stumps, headless reminders of what once grew there. Since I don’t want to be accused of promoting conspiracy theories, I won’t refer you to the restoration plan at the bottom of Wilder Ranch State Park’s web page, or suggest you contact the Benthic Lab or California Parks and Recreation to see if they can help you understand anything. After all, we wouldn’t try to burn out, poison, or starve illegal aliens, would we?
