NATURALISING AUSTRALIAN TREES IN SOUTH AFRICA - Rethinking Invasion Ecologies from the Environmental Humanities - page 204

and rainfall and temperature records (Hutchins, 1888: 37-112). He wrote articles
and pamphlets for farmers recommending what species of trees to plant in specific
regions of the Cape (Hutchins, 1902).
Most of Hutchins's ideas appeared in a multi-part essay, 'Extra-Tropical
Forestry', published from 1905 to 1906 in successive issues of the AJCGH . Here,
he argued that the Cape Colony had an 'extra-tropical' climate, meaning a climate
predominating in regions near, but not in, the tropics, and characterised by dryness,
abundant sunshine and variable rain. Cape colonists, Hutchins wrote, should select
exotic trees from other extra-tropical regions. He noted specifically that there was
a southern hemispheric extra-tropical zone, 'the sea-level climate between about
latitude 23' and latitude 43' which embraced southern Africa, Australia, Argentina,
southern Brazil, Chile and northern New Zealand' (Hutchins, 1905: 19). To
pinpoint extra-tropical regions directly comparable to the Cape, he then analysed
rainfall averages and patterns, altitude, average temperatures, light and humidity.
He published no map of those regions from which his readers should select trees,
but offered descriptive guidance. Hutchins was not alone in his prescriptions;
the mantra 'fit the tree to the climate' dictated the Cape Colony's official forestry
policy. C. B. McNaughton, a forester in the Cape Colony, similarly told farmers
in 1904: 'Forest species may be grown far from their natural habitat provided that
the local climate is similar to that to which they are naturally accustomed'
(McNaughton, 1903: 4). The emphasis put Cape foresters at odds with many of
their professional counterparts in northern Europe and Britain, who mocked
Hutchins's seemingly eccentric interests in climate and experimental plantations. 9
Hutchins shrugged off these criticisms with the observation that:

Forest Meteorology in Northern Europe is without the practical importance
that it possesses in the extra-tropical parts of the world, and its study has been
neglected in Europe, with the result that after the failure of many unsuitable
trees, all introduced trees have been decried.

(Hutchins, 1905: 517)

Meteorology and climatology mattered more in the Cape, he believed, because
few indigenous forests existed and indigenous species could not be grown widely
in plantations.
Hutchins's exuberant research into exotics struck the Director of Kew Gardens,
William Thiselton-Dyer, as excessive and impractical. In 1896, Hutchins asked
Kew to test some seeds from Europe before he purchased them. Thiselton-Dyer
criticised his large, 10-ton order of seeds: 'I am obliged to remark that the
instructions have been drawn up with want of practical knowledge . . . some
[species on the list] . . . are actually unknown.' 10 Hutchins fired a letter back to the
Secretary of Agriculture chiding Thiselton-Dyer: 'the remarks of the Director need
not cause surprise. The Kew establishment can have had but a limited experience
of the supply of forest seeds. Of forestry proper they have no knowledge either
theoretical or practical.' 11

Hutchins confidently rebutted the most prominent