Melaleuca and Eucalyptus Trees

SoCal

Writing from San Diego where many lovely plants for Australia and New Zealand thrive. In the last few years, the eucalypus and melaleucas have been increasingly viewed as plants that should be removed from the region. There are magnificent eucalypus trees here - 150 year old+ - that are being felled to plant indigenous sapplings. One of the arguments used for removing eucalypus and melaleuca trees is that they are brittle and prone to splitting and snapping. This characteristic makes them a threat to people and property.

I feel very fortunate to have come across this web site as you all in Australia are the experts on these plants...

Can anyone please comment on the melaleuca specifically? We have 4 of these trees and I've never seen a large branch snap off - are they known to be brittle?

Thank you for your comments

Eric Frei

There's around 700 types of eucs and around 170+ types of melaleuca .... pretty hard to say exactly which ones you have, which are being removed and that they all fail. Callistemons have also been reclassified into melaleucas now, so hard for us to know what sort of melaleuca you have and what sort of form it has.

In my experience some ssp can have traits making them less reliable than others.

In my experience some ssp are more prone to poor integrity (multi-stemmed, co-dominant branch unions, included bark unions etc) than others and depending on local conditions can fail more frequently.

In my experience many very large aging trees regardless of species become unreliable as they do shed, in Australia we talk about SLD etc with eucs but there's numerous cases of elms and oaks doing the same elsewhere.

As the life cycle of the tree tips into over mature then senescence trees do dieback, trees do shed so trees need the room to both live and die. If the natural cycle of demise cannot be tolerated due to target risk then removal is an option, so is habitat creation and heavy pruning.

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SoCal

Hello Eric,
Thank you very much for your post. It is understood that there are many, many species of both eucalyptus and melaleucas. It is really a challenge trying to figure out what we have here. I've posted a photo of the tree on the property... thanks again to you and this site for your help.

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Eric Frei

They look like topped paperbarks, likely melaleuca quinquenervia but it is a bad small picture.

So better pics and also pics of the branching structure, they do not normally grow like lollipops.

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SoCal

Yep - they were butchered by a local "tree guy". Thanks again for all.