Early NZ Grower interest in durable eucalypts
Neil Barr’s Growing Eucalypt Trees for Timber milling on New Zealand Farms (1996) provides a colourful history from the early period following European settlement to more recent times. For much of our history there has been little focus on naturally durable species, despite
the over-cutting of durable native timbers, particularly totara. Much of interest was curtailed by the advent of CCA treatment of pine during the 1950s.
Barr (1996) recommended planting three well-proven durable stringybark species (E. pilularis, E. muelleriana and E. globoidea) that he and
others had grown both for untreated naturally durable posts and poles, and for high quality durable sawn timber. Neil Barr died in January 1996, leaving both ‘a legend’ and ‘a legacy’ in having founded the New Zealand Farm Forestry Association (Various, 1996).
» Click here for more information about Neil Barr's work with growing eucalypts.
In 1970, as part of erosion control trials undertaken by the Ministry of Works and Development Plant Division, John Sheppard planted eucalypt trials in one of New Zealand’s driest environments, the Wither
Hills, a name now synonymous with the internationally renowned Marlborough sauvignon blanc that is grown in this area. Sheppard established three trials to investigate early survival and growth of ten dryland eucalypts. By 1988, he concluded that E. bosistoana and E. camaldulensis were
the best species overall (Sheppard, 1988). These species are both durable species and of special interest to the NZDFI project.
In 1975 the newly established hardwood research unit of the Forest Research Institute released its Special Purpose Species policy. This unit promoted for further
research species that were either from the non-durable ash group (class 4) or E. saligna and E. botryoides (only moderately
durable class 3 species). No very durable or durable (class one or two) species were included.
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