Naturalising Australian Trees in South Africa: Climate, Exotics and Experimentation

Abstract

This article explains how South African foresters have selected, experimented with and successfully grown Australian genera and species of trees in plantations during the past 130 years. First in the Cape Colony in the 1880s and 1890s, and later elsewhere in South Africa in the twentieth century, foresters developed theoretical techniques to find climates similar to those in southern Africa in order to select exotic species of trees from those regions. They then tested these species in experimental arboreta and plantations across South Africa to select the most successful and valuable species to grow commercially in each area. This globally unique and ultimately successful research programme arose in response to local environmental constraints, an increasing demand for timber, and the difficulties that foresters and white settlers faced when trying to select and grow Australian trees. This article revises historical understandings of the development of silviculture in South Africa and intervenes in current scientific and popular debates over Australian trees in South Africa.

Notes

¹ Official statistics vary and primarily count responses from private growers. The number of actual plantations likely excceeds the estimates given. See Republic of South Africa, Department of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries, Report on Commercial Timber Resources and Primary Roundwood Processing in South Africa, 2007/2008, available at http://www.forestry.co.za/uploads/File/industry_info/statistical_data/Timber%20Statistics%20Report%202007_2008%20Final.doc, retrieved on 23 December 2010. Uncounted Acacia, Eucalyptus and Hakea cover millions of hectares, although there is no exact statistical information given the wide dispersement of species.

^*A special thanks goes to Fred J. Kruger for kindly helping me to understand the institutional and scientific history of forestry in South Africa. Jane Carruthers, Fredrik Jonsson, Michael Cheek and William Attwell also read and commented on the full manuscript. The anonymous reviewers and editors at the Journal of Southern African Studies offered thorough criticisms and helped me to strengthen the paper before publication. The history departments at the Australian National University, Johannesburg University, Stellenbosch University and the University of Cape Town, and the anthropology department at the University of Chicago, generously allowed me to present versions of this paper. The Social Science Research Council and the American Council of Learned Societies financed my International Dissertation Research Fellowship for 2010.

² For one of the first integrated approaches, see I.A.W. Macdonald, F.J. Kruger and A.A.Ferrar (eds), The Ecology and Management of Biological Invasions in Southern Africa: Proceedings of the National Synthesis Symposium on the Ecology of Biological Invasions (Cape Town, Oxford University Press, 1986). Numerous centres of research in South Africa, including the Plant Conservation Unit at the University of Cape Town and the Centre for Invasion Biology at Stellenbosch University, engage with historical research to understand biological invasion.

³ W. Beinart and P. Coates, Environment and History: The Taming of Nature in the USA and South Africa (London, Routledge, 1995), p. 40.

⁴ A.W. Crosby, Ecological Imperialism: The Biological Expansion of Europe, 900–1900 (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1986). For eucalypts, see W. Beinart and K. Middleton, ‘Plant Transfers in Historical Perspective: A Review Article’, Environment and History, 10, 1 (February 2004), pp. 6, 10; J. Radkau, Nature and Power: A Global History of the Environment (New York, Cambridge University Press, 2008), pp. 21–2, 159; B.R. Tomlinson, ‘Empire of the Dandelion: Ecological Imperialism and Economic Expansion 1860–1914’, Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History, 26, 2 (May 1988), p. 89. For ‘wattles’, the common name for Australian Acacia, see C.A. Kull and H. Rangan, ‘Acacia Exchanges: Wattles, Thorn Trees, and the Study of Plant Movements’, Geoforum, 39, 3 (May 2008), pp. 1,258–72; J. Carruthers and L. Robin, ‘Taxonomic Imperialism in the Battles for Acacia: Identity and Science in South Africa and Australia’, Transactions of the Royal Society of South Africa, 65, 1 (February 2010), pp. 48–9.

⁵ G.A. Barton, Empire Forestry and the Origins of Environmentalism (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2002), pp. 98–104; B.M. Bennett, ‘The El Dorado of Forestry: The Eucalyptus in India, South Africa, and Thailand, 1850–2000’, International Review of Social History, 55, Supplement (December 2010), pp. 27–50; K. Brown, ‘The Conservation and Utilisation of the Natural World: Silviculture in the Cape Colony, c. 1902–1910’, Environment and History, 7, 4 (November 2001), pp. 427–47; K. Brown, ‘“Trees, Forests and Communities”: Some Historiographical Approaches to Environmental History on Africa’, Area, 35, 4 (December 2003), pp. 343–56; S.R. Rajan, Modernizing Nature: Forestry and Imperial Eco-Development 1800–1950 (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2006); J.A. Tropp, Natures of Colonial Change: Environmental Relations in the Making of the Transkei (Athens, OH, Ohio University Press, 2006); S. Pooley, ‘Pressed Flowers: Notions of Indigenous and Alien Vegetation in South Africa's Western Cape, c. 1902–1945’, Journal of Southern African Studies [JSAS], 36, 3 (September 2010), pp. 599–618; K.B. Showers, ‘Prehistory of Southern African Forestry: From Vegetable Garden to Tree Plantation’, Environment and History, 16, 3 (August 2010), pp. 295–322; H. Witt, ‘“Clothing the Once Bare Brown Hills of Natal”: The Origin and Development of Wattle Growing in Natal, 1860-1960’, South African Historical Journal, 53, 1 (2005), pp. 99–122; H. Witt, ‘The Emergence of Privately Grown Industrial Tree Plantations’, in S. Dovers, R. Edgecombe and B. Guest (eds), South Africa's Environmental History: Cases and Comparisons (Athens, OH, Ohio University Press, 2002), pp. 90–111.

⁶ See Rajan, Modernising Nature, pp. 78–9, 191; Brown, ‘The Conservation and Utilisation’, p. 433; Showers, ‘Prehistory of Southern African Forestry’, p. 305.

⁷ Brown, ‘The Conservation and Utilisation’, p. 433.

⁸ Brown, ‘“Trees, Forests and Communities”’, pp. 344–5. For example, Rajan, Modernising Nature, pp. 78–9, emphasises the influence of John Croumbie Brown, a botanist in Cape Town from 1863–66. For a critique of scholars who read too deeply into Brown's prolific publications (which make his short stint as a botanist in Cape Town seem more influential in the Cape's history than it was), see L. van Sittert, ‘The Nature of Power: Cape Environmental History, the History of Ideas and Neoliberal Historiography’, The Journal of African History, 45, 2 (July 2004), p. 311.

⁹ C.C. Robertson, ‘Some Suggestions as to the Principles of the Scientific Naturalisation of Exotic Forest Trees’, South African Journal of Science, 6, 1 (November 1909), p. 219.

¹⁰ This article empirically builds upon work that stresses the influences of the ‘colonial’ and the ‘periphery’ on the development of science, but it does not use those theoretical categories because they are overly deterministic. Works that critique an emphasis on the role of the metropole in silviculture include R.H. Grove, Green Imperialism: Colonial Expansion, Tropical Island Edens and the Origins of Environmentalism, 1600–1860 (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1995); Barton, Empire Forestry; P. Vandergeest and N.L. Peluso, ‘Empires of Forestry: Professional Forestry and State Power in Southeast Asia, Part 1’, Environment and History, 12, 1 (February 2006), pp. 31–64.

¹¹ Robertson, ‘Some Suggestions’, p. 219.

¹² S. Pooley, ‘Jan van Riebeeck as Pioneering Explorer and Conservator of Natural Resources at the Cape of Good Hope (1652–’62)’, Environment and History, 15, 1 (February 2009), pp. 19–20.

¹³ Most recent estimates put indigenous forest cover around 0.5 per cent. For a larger discussion of indigenous forests in South Africa, see L. Mucina and M.C. Rutherford (eds), The Vegetation of South. Africa, Lesotho and Swaziland (Pretoria, South African National Biodiversity Institute, 2006).

¹⁴ W. Beinart, The Rise of Conservation in South Africa: Settlers, Livestock and the Environment 1770–1950 (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2003), pp. 195–245, 266–303; J. Frawley, ‘Joseph Maiden and the National and Transnational Circulation of Wattle Acacia spp.’, Historical Records of Australian Science, 21, 1 (May 2010), pp. 35–54; L. van Sittert, ‘“The Seed Blows About in Every Breeze”: Noxious Weed Eradication in the Cape Colony, 1860–1909’, JSAS, 26, 4 (December 2000), pp. 655–74.

¹⁵ See Barton, Empire Forestry, pp. 98–105; R. Grove, ‘Early Themes in African Conservation: The Cape in the Nineteenth Century’, in R. Grove and D. Anderson (eds), Conservation in Africa: People, Policies and Practice (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1987), pp. 21–39.

¹⁶ See J. Noble, History, Productions, and Resources of the Cape of Good Hope (Cape Town, W.A. Richards and Sons, 1886), p. 150.

¹⁷ G.L. Shaughnessy, ‘Historical Ecology of Alien Woody Plants in the Vicinity of Cape Town, South Africa’ (Ph.D. Thesis, University of Cape Town, 1980), pp. 104–5.

¹⁸ Bennett, ‘The El Dorado of Forestry’, pp. 30–32.

¹⁹ See the introductory essays in J.D. Hooker, Flora Novae Zelandiae (London, Lovell Reeve, 1853) and Flora Tasmaniae (London, Lovell Reeve, 1860).

²⁰ A.R. Wallace, Island Life (London, Macmillan, 1880), p. 495.

²¹ Wallace, Island Life, p. 496.

²² R. Grove, ‘Scottish Missionaries, Evangelical Discourses and the Origins of Conservation Thinking in Southern Africa 1820–1900’, JSAS, 15, 2 (January 1989), p. 184, cited in Beinart and Coates, Environment and History, p. 41.

²³ D.E. Hutchins, ‘Extra-Tropical Forestry: Being Notes on Timber and Other Trees Cultivated in South Africa and in the Extra-Tropical Forests of Other Countries’, Agricultural Journal of the Cape of Good Hope [AJCGH], 26, 1 (1905), pp. 18–19.

²⁴ For the history of the rise of botanic gardens in the British world, see D.P. McCracken, Gardens of Empire: Botanical Institutions of the Victorian British Empire (London, Leicester University Press, 1997); R. Drayton, Nature's Government: Science, Imperial Britain, and the ‘Improvement’ of the World (New Haven, CT, Yale University Press, 2000).

²⁵ In 1888 the Natal government asked for and received information about the Cape's system of forestry; see National Archives South Africa Pietermaritzburg [NASA-PMB], Colonial Secretary's Office [CSO], 1181, file 935.The Cape Colony sent the forester Henry Fourcade to Natal to report on their forests, but he decided not to stay and work as a forester there. See University of Cape Town Archives [UCT], Fourcade Bequest, BC 246, MSS C5, D.E. Hutchins to Henry Fourcade, 10 July 1890.

²⁶ For a list of plants see the papers of R.W. Adlam, UCT, R.W. Adlam, BC 815. Adlam moved to the Transvaal and served as the first curator of Joubert Park in Johannesburg from 1893 to 1903, helping to lay the foundation of a public garden in the city after the Transvaal's annexation in 1902. For Natal's wattle industry, see Witt, ‘“Clothing the Once Bare Brown Hills of Natal”’, pp. 100–6. Ambiguity will always surround the introduction of many species into southern Africa because of the lack of accurate records and classifications.

²⁷ For Mueller's influence, see P. MacOwan, ‘The Late Baron Sir Ferdinand von Mueller, C.M.G., F.R.S., Etc., Government Botanist of Victoria’, AJCGH, 9, 23 (1896), pp. 627–8.

²⁸ See National Archives of South Africa Cape Town [NASA-CT], Department of Agriculture [AGR], 722, F719: Ernest Hutchins to Undersecretary of Agriculture, 9 July 1896; Undersecretary for Agriculture, Cape Colony, to Undersecretary for Mines and Agriculture, New South Wales, 6 August 1897. Also see Frawley, ‘Joseph Maiden’.

²⁹ NASA-CT, AGR 722, F719: Joseph Maiden to Undersecretary of Agriculture, 3 November 1896; Undersecretary for Agriculture to Agent General for the Cape of Good Hope, 7 June 1905.

³⁰ For a discussion of the entry of many species into South Africa, see Beinart, The Rise of Conservation, p. 96.

³¹ G.L. Shaughnessy, ‘A Case Study of Some Woody Plant Introductions to the Cape Town Area’, in Macdonald et al. (eds), The Ecology and Management of Biological Invasions in Southern Africa, p. 41, cited in van Sittert, ‘“The Seed Blows About in Every Breeze”’, p. 660.

³² These frustrations are well documented in the AJCGH and other newspapers from the period.

³³ NASA-CT, AGR 722, F719, Maiden to Undersecretary of Agriculture, 3 November 1896.

³⁴ NASA-CT, AGR 722, F719, Maiden to Undersecretary of Agriculture, 13 August 1897.

³⁶ P. MacOwen, ‘Australian Hedge Plant’, AJCGH, 7, 2 (1894), p. 40.

³⁵ P. MacOwen, ‘Gum of Eucalyptus’, AJCGH, 6 (1893), p. 32.

³⁷ Hutchins, ‘Extra-Tropical Forestry’, p. 523.

³⁸ E.E. Ogston, ‘The Twisting of Blue Gums’, AJCGH, 22, 2 (1903), p. 216.

³⁹ Farmer, ‘De Beers and Blue Gum Wood’, AJCGH, 22, 3 (1903), p. 352.

⁴⁰ R.H. Pringle, ‘Blue Gums as Fuel and Timber Trees’, AJCGH, 22, 5 (1903), p. 596.

⁴¹ For an analysis of the difficulties in establishing wattles in grassland, see I.A.W. Macdonald, F.J. Kruger and A.A. Ferrar, ‘Processes of Invasion by Alien Plants’, in Macdonald, Kruger and A.A. Ferrar (eds), The Ecology and Management of Biological Invasions in Southern Africa, pp. 145–55.

⁴² Hutchins, ‘Extra-Tropical Forestry’, p. 523.

⁴³ See for example, J. Storr Lister, Practical Hints on Tree Planting in the Cape Colony (Cape Town, Printed by W.A. Richards and Sons, 1884).

⁴⁴ For a short biography see W.K. Darrow, David Ernest Hutchins: A Pioneer in South African Forestry (Pretoria, Department of Forestry, 1977).

⁴⁵ Stellenbosch University Engineering and Forestry Library, MSS, T.R. Sim Papers, Unpublished Autobiography, p. 67.

⁴⁶ See D.E. Hutchins, Report on Measurements of the Growth of Australian Trees on the Nilgiris (Madras, Government Press, 1883).

⁴⁷ Hutchins, ‘Extra-Tropical Forestry’, p. 521.

⁴⁸ For the books Hutchins ordered which discussed Australian meteorology and botany, see documents in NASA-CT, AGR 723, F791.

⁴⁹ NASA-CT, AGR 723: B559/6, Hutchins to Undersecretary of Agriculture, 13 December 1897; A27, Undersecretary of Agriculture to Hutchins, 8 January 1898; B19/6/98, Hutchins to Undersecretary of Agriculture, 20 January 1898 (quotation in latter). He also promoted this view publicly; see Hutchins, ‘Extra-Tropical Forestry’, p. 521.

⁵⁰ D.E. Hutchins, Cycles of Drought and Good Seasons in South Africa (Wynberg, Wynberg Times, 1888), pp. 37–112.

⁵¹ D.E. Hutchins, A Chat on Tree Planting with Farmers (Cape Town, W.A. Richards and Sons, 1902).

⁵² Hutchins, ‘Extra-Tropical Forestry’, p. 19.

⁵³ Most publications written by Cape foresters in the 1890s and early 1900s discuss the important of comparing climate to select the best exotic species.

⁵⁴ C.B. McNaughton, Tree Planting for Timber and Fuel (Cape Town, Townshend Taylor and Shashall, 1903), p. 4.

⁵⁵ See UCT, Fourcade Bequest, BC 246, C7, C.B. McNaughton to Henry Fourcade, 9 December 1909.

⁵⁶ Hutchins, ‘Extra-Tropical Forestry’, p. 517.

⁵⁷ NASA-CT, AGR 725, No 117, Agent General of the Cape of Good Hope to Secretary for Agriculture, 14 September 1896, enclosing W.C. Thiselton-Dyer to Sir David Tennant, 12 September 1896.

⁵⁸ NASA-CT, AGR 725, B566, Hutchins to Undersecretary for Agriculture, 21 October 1896.

⁵⁹ NASA-CT, AGR 722, F719, Maiden to Undersecretary of Agriculture, 3 November 1896.

⁶⁰ See R.J. Poynton, Tree Planting in Southern Africa, Vol. 2: The Eucalypts (Pretoria, Department of Forestry, 1979), pp. 350–81.

⁶¹ D.E. Hutchins, Transvaal Forest Report (Pretoria, Government Printing and Stationary Office, 1903).

⁶² Hutchins, Transvaal Forest Report, p. 124.

⁶³ Ibid., p. 134.

⁶⁴ Transvaal Department of Agriculture, Annual Report of the Director of Agriculture 1st July 1905 to 30th June 1906 (Pretoria, Government Stationary Office, 1907), pp. 14–15.

⁶⁵ National Archives of South Africa Pretoria [NASA-P], Transvaal Agriculture Department [TAD], 540, 1181/06, H.F. Wilson to High Commissioner, 29 December 1904, enclosing J. Storr Lister, ‘Forest Officers: Scientific Training Of’, 29 November 1904; K.A. Carlson, Transplanted: Being the Adventures of a Pioneer Forester in South Africa (Pretoria, Minerva Drukpers, 1947), Chapter 7.

⁶⁶ B.M. Bennett, ‘“The Only School of Forestry South of the Equator”: The Rise and Demise of the School of Forestry at Tokai, 1906–1911’, Environment and History, forthcoming.

⁶⁷ Hutchins eventually left South Africa because in 1904 Storr Lister, not Hutchins, received the position of Chief-Conservator. Darrow, David Ernest Hutchins, p. 13.

⁶⁸ NASA-P, TAD 540, 1181/06, F618, Joseph Storr Lister to Charles Legat, 6 January 1909.

⁶⁹ Afrikaner foresters slowly entered the Department of Forestry after 1910, making it more ‘South African’, a trend found elsewhere in state scientific institutions. See S. Dubow, A Commonwealth of Knowledge: Science, Sensibility, and White South Africa 1820–2000 (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2006), pp. 7–8.

⁷⁰ See Robertson, ‘Some Suggestions’, p. 219; Poynton, Volume 2, The Eucalypts, p. 16.

⁷¹ J.D. Keet, Director of Forestry from 1935 to 1943 in the integrated Department of Agriculture and Forestry, studied at the South African College forestry school.

⁷² Annual Report of the Department of Forestry for the Year Ended 31st March, 1931 (U.G. 11/1932), p. 28.

⁷³ For some of the files related to classification and experiments of exotic species of tree see NASA-CT: District Forest Officer Butterworth (FBT) 1/3; FBT 1/4; Chief Regional Forest Officer Transkei (FCT) 3/1/57; FCT 3/1/60; FCT 3/1/61. Foresters worked to create comprehensive guides of Eucalyptus species in South Africa. See E.K. Marsh, ‘A Key to the Species of Eucalyptus Grown in South Africa’, Journal of the Southern African Forestry Association, 3 (October 1939), pp. 16–64.

⁷⁴ Poynton, The Eucalypts, p. 15.

⁷⁵ C.C. Robertson, The Trees of Extra-Tropical Australia: A Reconnaissance of the Forest Trees of Australia from the Point of View of Their Cultivation in South Africa (Cape Town, Cape Times Limited, 1926), p. 1.

⁷⁶ See the research on Eucalyptus saligna from 1914 to 1923 documented in NASA-CT, FCT 3/1/61, T 953/51.

⁷⁷ Interestingly, Hutchins made the suggestion to space pines wider apart, one of the major changes brought about by Craib's research. See NASA-CT, FCT 3/1/61, T953/74, C.E. Legat to all Conservators, 25 Feb 1915. Craib's methods remained highly controversial in Europe until the 1960s. See W.E. Hiley, Conifers: South African Methods of Cultivation (London, Faber and Faber, 1959), p. 43.

⁷⁸ W. Duncan Reekie, ‘The Wood from the Trees: Ex Libri ad Historiam Pertinentes Cognoscere’, South African Journal of Economic History, 19, 1–2 (September 2004), pp. 73–4.

⁷⁹ See E.E.M. Loock, The Pines of Mexico and British Honduras: A Report of a Reconnaissance of Mexico and British Honduras during 1947 (Pretoria, Government Printer, 1950).

⁸⁰ See E. Vowinckel, ‘Potential Growth Areas for Introduced Tree Species’, Forestry in South Africa, 1, 1 (July 1961), pp. 91–104. Poynton's bibliography in The Eucalypts, pp. 865–9, lists studies on eucalypts.

⁸¹ N.L. King, ‘Tree-Planting in South Africa’, Journal of the South African Forestry Association, 21, 1 (October, 1951), pp. 12–14. Also see R.J. Poynton, Notes on Exotic Forest Trees in South Africa (Pretoria, Government Printer, 1959, 2nd rev. edn).

⁸² Darrow, David Ernest Hutchins.

⁸³ For a review of this period see W.J.A. Louw, ‘General History of the South African Forest Industry: 1975 to 1990’, Southern African Forestry Journal, 200 (March 2004), pp. 77–86.

⁸⁴ For the 1960 statistic see Republic of South Africa Department of Forestry, Investigation of the Forest and Timber Industry of South Africa: Report on South Africa's Timber Resources, 1960 (Pretoria, 1964), p. 7. For the 1993 statistic see J. Davidson, ‘Ecological Aspects of Eucalyptus Plantations’, in Proceedings: Regional Expert Consultation on Eucalyptus, 4–8 October 1993, Vol. 1 (Bangkok, Food and Agricultural Organization, 1995/1996), available at http://www.fao.org/docrep/005/ac777e/ac777e06.htm#bm06, retrieved on 30 July 2010.

⁸⁵ Kull and Rangan, ‘Acacia Exchanges’, p. 1,264.

⁸⁶ J. Tropp, ‘Displaced People, Replaced Narratives: Forest Conflicts and Historical Perspectives in the Tsolo District, Transkei’, JSAS, 29, 1 (2003), p. 228.

⁸⁸ Poynton, The Eucalypts, p. 815.

⁸⁷ R.J. Poynton, ‘Trees for the Western Transvaal Selected on the Basis of Arboretum Trials’ (MA Thesis, Stellenbosch University, 1968); R.J. Poynton, Tree Planting in Southern Africa, Vol. 1: The Pines (Pretoria, Department of Forestry, 1979); Poynton, The Eucalypts.

⁸⁹ Ibid.

⁹⁰ Showers, ‘Prehistory of Southern African Forestry’, p. 312.

⁹¹ Report on Commercial Timber Resources and Primary Roundwood Processing in South Africa 2007/2008, p. xiii.

⁹² Ibid.

⁹³ Department of Water Affairs and Forestry, Annual Report, 1April 2008 to 31 March 2009 (R.P. 163/2009), p. 39. Available at http://www.dwaf.gov.za/documents/AnnualReports/ANNUALREPORT2008-2009.pdf, retrieved on 20 December 2010.

⁹⁴ Ibid., p. 41. As one sign of this decline, Stellenbosch University's former forestry library has been rehoused in the Engineering Library. Many important letters were thrown away and other archives sit on open shelves and remain uncatalogued.

⁹⁵ A. Neely, ‘“Blame it on the Weeds”: Politics, Poverty, and Ecology in the New South Africa’, JSAS, 36, 4 (December 2010), pp. 869–87.

⁹⁶ See J. and J.L. Comaroff, ‘Naturing the Nation: Aliens, Apocalypse and the Postcolonial State’, JSAS, 27, 3 (September 2001), pp. 627–51.

⁹⁷ Scientists themselves often take a more balanced approach to ‘invasive’ species than have the general public. For an example, see B.W. van Wilgen, ‘Be Afraid, the Invasion is Real’, Witness, 10 November 2010, available at http://www.witness.co.za/index.php?showcontent&global%5b_id%5d = 50530, retrieved on 23 December 2010.