Belfast Botanic Gardens Tree Archive

There are some 500 species of Eucalyptus that dominate the woods of Australasia. They are all evergreen and generally aromatic. However there are only about 5 or 6 species that are hardy enough to grow in the British Isles and even these can occasionally get damaged by severe frost The cider gum, a native of Tasmania, is the commonest Eucalypt grown in the British Isles and is said to be hardy down to -14degC

Like most of the family, E. gunnii has distinctly different juvenile and adult leaves. The juvenile leaves are rounded, with a dense blue bloom, the adult leaves are more linear and a darker green. The juvenile leaves are much favoured by florists and the species is grown commercilly as a coppice to provide large quanitities of the blue juvenile foliage.