AusBonsai

I am growing on a few bottlebrush in what was the veggie plot and this Eucalyptus made its self at home. Most probably from a bird dropping. I have hacked it back a few times (this whole plot was covered in tomatoes until a couple of days ago) and I got a real shock on how big the trunk is. I don't know if the "curvy" trunk is from me hacking it or from the weight of the tomatoes but the growth in a short period of time is staggering.
Anyway it has to come out as its taking over the bottlebrush grow area so probably in November I will sharpen the tools.
I have no idea what variety so if anyone can assist in that area I would be most appreciative.

The seed must have come from somewhere. Are there any larger trees in the vicinity? They would give a likely guide to the species.
Otherwise it is quite difficult to ID Eucs, especially young ones because they tend to have different juvenile foliage and adult bark takes some time to start to develop. In the bush there tends to be a limited range of species in each area but in town the possibilities are much broader because gardeners are likely to grow species from all over the country, potentially giving hundreds of possibilities.
I think we can rule out the Corymbia subfamily because they tend to have distinctive juvenile leaves.
My instinct (guess) is red gum which is relatively common over a huge part of Aust, germinates readily, grows fast and has juvenile growth somewhat like this.

HI Watto . Nice . Looks like the cheeky bugger has been pinching your tomatoes food . Hopefully you will have some nice fibrous roots .As for an ID I'm leaning towards E melliodora , Yellow Box . But like Neil it's still a guess . It grows down at your elevation . The leaves reduce well especially after a late spring frost and for me they tend to be easy to work on the roots . Another good one to watch .

Good stuff Watto.
That’s hard to tell, but looks like quite long internodes.
Some seem to respond really well to reducing them, but others not so much.
Definitely keep us updated.

The tomatoes were running rampant but we had our first proper frost this week which put an end to them. There are gums in just about every backyard in my area, a few different sorts from what I can see.
The internodes are big but I am hopeful they will reduce (along with the leaf size) over time with bonsai care. I am also confident that the dig will be easy because the ground there is good.
Next update will be after the dig (if its successful).

The leaves look similar, but not quite to something like E. melliodora yellow box - colour and stem colour OK, not quite same shape? And what I have seem to be juvenile leaf shapes. When it gets older it might bark peel to something paler - that might be convincing.

There's only 850 other Eucs it might be... Next time, when birds poop, make sure you ask them what they've been eating.

If it is E. melliodora, its a good prospect. Cut back past the boring bits, plant at an angle, grow hard with only a couple of shoots to get thickness and taper - rub off everything else quite early.

Good luck.

Gavin

Thanks Gavin. A few photos after the dig, but all will depend on the root system.

Hi Watto,

Nice movement on the lower trunk, you should be able to do something interesting with that.

A while ago delisea put me onto this website which should at least help narrow the species down:
http://keyserver.lucidcentral.org:8080/euclid/keys.jsp

Good luck and keep us posted.

Matt.

I had planned to show a series of photos of me digging this from the garden as my thinking was it would be easy. Well, not as easy as I expected and there are no photos of the actual digging because, well there was bad language and a bad back.
The dig was yesterday and today I took a photo. I removed quite a lot of foliage and I really like the trunk movement. I used a few theory's I have used before:-
1) Shibui has often said that natives prefer to be root worked when it is warmer so the timing must be right?
2) It had to be removed to allow the bottlebrush to grow so the timing must be right?
3) It was growing in a garden so the growing conditions were not too bad, so the timing must be right?
4) Post operative sit the pot in water for a few weeks
5) Get it in the smallest possible pot sensibly
Here is the photo and in five years or so I will report back.

Wow!! That looks great.

Great job Watto!

G-day Watto
Mate!! that trunk looks good , I hope this one pulls through.

That has a beautiful trunk on it, hope it pulls through. Would love to seem some further progression on it.

Well done, can't wait to see how this progresses! Did you have to trim back much of the roots? Was there a big tap root, if so, what did you do?

I tried rescuing some Euc saplings recently. Barely managed any roots.

They dropped all their leaves in a week or so, then about a month later shot new growth, though it was from the base of the trunk. Unfortunately the pot was accidentally mistaken for something else and was binned (I'd placed it near a stack of empty pots) ... bit tragic but lessons learnt!

Looking good Watto . If you don't want the bottom branches at the very base I'd chop them off . The tree might get lazy and die back to the lowest growth . If it is E melliodora they are pretty tough ,there is one growing in Hiroshima that survived an atomic bomb blast .