The Footprints of Citizen Labillardière
Chronology of the discovery of Eucalyptus globulus
Gustavo Iglesias Trabado 
GIT Forestry Consulting - Consultoría y Servicios de Ingeniería Agroforestal - www.git-forestry.com - EUCALYPTOLOGICS
GIT Forestry Consulting - Consultoría y Servicios de Ingeniería Agroforestal - www.git-forestry.com - EUCALYPTOLOGICS
21 September 1791 - Brest, France
Commanded by Antoine Raymond Joseph de Bruni D'Entrecasteaux and Jean-Michel Huon de Kermadec, two converted merchant vessels, La Recherche (Research) and L'Espérance (Hope) set sail from the coast of Brittany en route to the Southern Seas to look for Jean-François de Galaup, comte de La Pérouse, who had vanished with the Astrolabe and the Boussole after exploring Botany Bay three years earlier.
Onboard, among the team of savant naturalistes, a botanist that would play a significant role for Eucalyptology: Jacques-Julien Houtou de Labillardière.
22 April 1792 - Recherche Bay, Van Diemen's Land
"With every step, one encounters the beauties of unspoilt nature … trees reaching a very great height and proportionate diameter … are devoid of branches along the trunk, but crowned with an everlasting green foliage. Some of these trees seem as ancient as the world"
Bruni d’Entrecasteaux
"The eye is astonished in contemplating the prodigious size of these trees … whose tufted summits were crowned with an ever verdant foliage: others, loosened by age from their roots, were supported by neighbouring trees, whilst, as they gradually decayed, they were incorporated … with the parent-earth … a striking picture of the operations of nature, who, left to herself, never destroys but that she may again create. (...) We were filled with admiration at the sight of these ancient forests, in which the sound of the axe had never been heard."
Jacques-Julien de Labillardière
6 May 1792- Recherche Bay, Van Diemen's Land
"To judge from Labillardière’s own account, 6 May 1792 was a day of considerable satisfaction, for this was his most noteworthy discovery, when he had a Tasmanian Blue Gum felled to collect flowers (...) Its great height proved a source of wonderment, but satisfaction also, for its tall straight trunk appeared to hold potential for ship building. To his delight, the carpenters found blue gum timbers the most suitable for providing planks to raise the gunwales on the oared boats. Labillardière could hardly have anticipated the great commercial advantages of his discovery: that it was introduced rapidly around the world as a cultivar, becoming the species by which the genus Eucalyptus became internationally known; that by 1905 four million feet of its timber would be supplied to the British Admiralty for wharf piles; that today more than 1.3 million hectares of E. globulus are planted outside Australia and 0.4 million hectares of plantation within Australia; or that Tasmania would adopt it as its State floral emblem."
John Mulvaney
1800 - Paris, France
Voyage in search of La Pérouse, Performed by order of the Constituent Assembly, During the Years 1791, 1792, 1793 and 1794 is published, and Eucalyptus globulus, plus E. cornuta officially described to enter the world of botanical discoveries.
8 February 2006 - Recherche Bay, Tasmania
Recherche Bay is declared National Heritage Site and will be managed by Tasmanian Land Conservancy to preserve the landscape witnessed and the footprints left by Citizen Labillardière. The sound of the axe will not be heard again.
Recommended Books
Duyker, E. ( 2003) Citizen Labillardière. A naturalist's life in revolution and exploration (1755-1834). Melbourne University Press. ISBN : 0-522-85160-6
Mulvaney, J. (2006). ‘The axe had never sounded’: place, people and heritage of Recherche Bay, Tasmania. Aboriginal History Monograph 14. Australian National University Press. ISBN: 9781921313202. ISBN: 9781921313219 (Online)WE DO NOT HAVE ANY OF THESE REFERENCES IN OUR EUCALYPTIC LIBRARY. DONATIONS WOULD BE GRATEFULLY WELCOME (OF COURSE!)
(If you are to order it from somewhere, just order two copies and send me one to Spain!)
(If you are to order it from somewhere, just order two copies and send me one to Spain!)
GIT's Eucalyptology Topics
© 2007 Gustavo Iglesias Trabado. Please contact us if you want to use all or part of this text and photography elsewhere. We like to share, but we do not like rudeness.
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