NATURALISING AUSTRALIAN TREES IN SOUTH AFRICA - Rethinking Invasion Ecologies from the Environmental Humanities - page 196

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NATURALISING AUSTRALIAN
TREES IN SOUTH AFRICA
Climate, exotics and experimentation
Brett M. Bennett
Introduction
Planted Australian trees from the genera Acacia , Casuarina , Eucalyptus and Hakea
have profoundly influenced South Africa's environment and economy over the past
130 years. White settlers in the Cape Colony imported and planted the first species
of Acacia and Eucalyptus in the late 1820s. The economic value and total number
of Australian trees raised in plantations sharply expanded in the 1880s and 1890s
and continued growing throughout most of the twentieth century, especially in
present-day KwaZulu-Natal and Mpumalanga. Today, there are approximately
500,000 hectares of Eucalyptus and 100,000 hectares of Acacia in South African
plantations alone, without considering the substantial number of Acacia,
Eucalyptus, and Hakea growing outside of commercial plantations (Republic of
South Africa, Department of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries, 2008).
The question of why there are so many Australian trees in South Africa today
has received attention from both scientists and historians. The vast majority of
scientific studies examining Australian trees in South Africa have measured bio-
logical and environmental factors to explain their dispersion patterns, though there
is a small but growing movement among scientists to incorporate historical
photography and environmental history. Many environmental historians also use
scientific interpretations to explain the success of Australian trees. Beinart and
Coates, for example, attribute the profusion of Australian species of Acacia and
Eucalyptus to their biological ability to thrive in South Africa's environment: 'Fast
growing (up to twenty feet in four years), stump sprouting, drought resistant and
shade providing, these readily naturalized Antipodean migrants acculturated happily
in relatively poor soil' (Beinart and Coates, 1995: 40). Numerous critiques of
Crosby's 'ecological imperialism' thesis, which saw 'New World' (Australian and
North and South American) floras and faunas as being weaker outside of their
native habitats than their more dominant 'Old World' (African, Asian and