Eucalyptus - The Cash Crop that Failed

Eucalyptus was introduced in California before Jack London’s time as a fast-growing Australian import that many believed could solve pioneer families’ shortage of wood for items such as furniture and utility poles. The original crop rows here were occupied by offspring of trees London had planted in hopes that harvesting eucalyptus would pay for other experiments. In 1910, fifteen thousand seedlings cost him only $150, and he eventually planted eighty thousand of three species: E. viminalis, E. tereticornis, and E. globulus. The experiment failed, however, because the trees proved useful only as firewood. To justify asking publishers for money in advance, London sometimes exaggerated ranch expenses, writing that he was heavily investing in the ranch by planting eucalyptus, that he had a hundred thousand trees in, that he planted from twenty thousand to forty thousand trees each year, and that for months at a time fifty men were on the payroll.

Glen Ellen, California · United States