NATURALISING AUSTRALIAN TREES IN SOUTH AFRICA - Rethinking Invasion Ecologies from the Environmental Humanities - page 199

Australian-southern African botanic transfers in the
nineteenth century
The introduction of Australian trees should be situated within the larger history
of biotic imports into southern Africa, beginning in 1652 with the first Dutch
settlement in Cape Town. The settlers actively introduced exotic species of flora
and fauna, creating new landscapes, environments and economies (Pooley, 2009:
19-20). White settlers in southern Africa planted exotic trees for several reasons,
the most important of which was that few native forests existed. Today, closed
indigenous forests cover less than 1 per cent of the land in South Africa, mostly
scattered in small patches across the country (Mucina and Rutherford, 2006: 33).
The Dutch officially ceded the governance of the Cape Colony to Britain in
1814, a formal recognition of Britain's de facto rule of the Cape dating back to 1806.
This official transfer encouraged new flows of people, plants and ideas between the
Cape and Australia. The climates of southern Africa and Australia seemed similar
to many of the people who travelled between the two continents. Many parts of
the Cape Colony and settled littoral Australia have arid climates punctuated by
drought and heat. Winter rain nourishes wheat-belts and vineyards in the
southwestern Cape and the settled parts of South Australia and Western Australia.
Many of the same types of seeds, weeds, plants and animals proliferated naturally
in southern Africa and Australia (van Sittert, 2000; Beinart, 2003: 195-245,
266-303; Frawley, 2010).
White settlers in the Cape Colony began importing and planting Australian
Acacia and Eucalyptus starting in the late 1820s. They planted exotic trees for
timber, for shelter from the sun and wind, and because they believed trees increased
rainfall in dry environments (Grove, 1987: 21-39; Barton, 2002: 98-105). Amateur
naturalists and travellers idiosyncratically directed the earliest biotic exchanges
before the creation of state and private botanic gardens in the middle of the
nineteenth century. Popular historical accounts suggest that Eucalyptus globulus (blue
gum) was introduced into the Cape in 1828 when Sir Galbraith Lowry Cole, the
new governor, brought the species with him from Mauritius (Noble, 1886: 150).
The first known introduction of Australian Acacia longifolia came in 1827 when
James Bowie, a plant collector for Kew Gardens, arrived in the Cape with seeds
from England (Shaughnessy, 1980: 104-105).
The popularity of Australian trees soared among Cape colonists in the 1860s
after botanical enthusiasts in Australia and France peddled grandiose claims about
their properties, especially those of the genus Eucalyptus. The Australian botanist,
Ferdinand von Mueller, boasted that the timber of Eucalyptus globulus rivalled the
world's most valuable timbers. Mueller and other botanists also argued that
eucalypts helped to cure malaria and other tropical diseases both by draining
swamps because of their vigorous growth and through the secretion of their
scented, powerful oils, which subscribers to the miasmic theory of disease believed
would kill malaria (Bennett, 2010: 30-32).
The mid-Victorian belief that Australia and southern Africa's locations in the
southern hemisphere made them geographically and botanically related helped