NATURALISING AUSTRALIAN TREES IN SOUTH AFRICA - Rethinking Invasion Ecologies from the Environmental Humanities - page 200

settlers to naturalise Australian trees. The botanist Joseph Hooker, who noted
similarities among the floras on different continents and islands across the entire
southern hemisphere, hypothesised that Australia and southern Africa might have
been bridged together as part of a large ancient southern continent (Hooker, 1853,
1860). The popular and prolific naturalist Alfred Russel Wallace argued that the
southern hemisphere was characterised by 'detached areas, in which rich floras have
developed . . . but [are] comparatively impotent and inferior beyond their own
domain' (Wallace, 1880: 495). The only exception to this rule was Australia's forest
flora, which grew in the southern hemisphere outside of its original geographic
range (ibid.: 496). Scientists in the Cape Colony expressed similar beliefs. John
Croumbie Brown viewed the dominance of Australian trees in the Cape in the
1860s as a sign of their evolutionary superiority (Grove, 1989: 184, from Beinart,
2003: 41). At least one Cape Colony forester, Hutchins, noted the dominance of
the Australian flora over the Cape's when arguing for the importation of Australian
trees into southern Africa (Hutchins, 1905: 18-19).
The creation of new scientific institutions in the second half of the nineteenth
century increased the intensity of biotic exchange. Melbourne and Cape Town
both established botanic gardens in the 1850s (McCracken, 1997; Drayton, 2000).
Gardens opened in Adelaide, Durban, Pietermaritzburg, King William's Town,
Graaff-Reinet, Perth and Grahamstown in the 1850s to 1870s. Botanic gardens in
Natal and the Cape Colony prominently featured Australian trees. Founded in
1881, the Cape Colony's Department of Forestry pursued the largest institutional
programme of tree planting in southern Africa in the 1880s and 1890s. Natal, the
Free State and the South African Republic all lagged behind the Cape in
developing state departments of forestry. Except for Natal's failed attempt to
maintain its fledgling Department of Forestry founded in 1891, none of these
territories created a permanent department of forestry until after the South African
War. 1 Private individuals, such as the British migrant into the Transvaal, Richard
Wills Adlam (1853-1903), brought and planted the majority of Australian seeds in
Natal, the Transvaal and the Free State. 2
Australian botanists helped to direct many exchanges in the second half of the
century. Australia's two most influential botanists in the late nineteenth century
maintained extensive correspondence with scientists in southern Africa and helped
settlers there select suitable species of trees to plant. Ferdinand von Mueller, the
government botanist for Victoria from 1853 to 1896, sent seeds and provided
advice to botanists, farmers and foresters for over 40 years (MacOwan, 1896:
627-628). Joseph Maiden, Director of the Sydney Botanic Gardens and Herbarium
from 1896 to 1924, worked as the official seed collector for the Cape Colony from
1896, when the Agriculture Department, at the request of Hutchins, established a
direct relationship with him. 3 Maiden continued in this role until 1905 when the
Cape Government ended these exchanges to save money. 4