The Eucalyptus: Sacred or profane?

One of the better indications of what we’ve learned in 149 years was provided Jan. 2 by Carolyn Blair, director of the San Francisco Tree Council, an organization that calls city-sponsored habitat restoration via euc removal "unnecessary destruction of non-native, healthy trees... simply to make way for native plants." Replying to a note from my friend Cindy, a native-ecosystem activist, Blair demanded: "If native trees were so great, why didn’t they plant them back in 1870?"

Cindy says those words remind her of Lucy Van Pelt’s immortal question to piano player Schroeder about why, if Beethoven was so great, he wasn’t on bubble gum cards.

Naturalist and writer Ted Williams is a contributor to Writers on the Range, a service of High Country News.