ESHS/HSS Annual Meeting

An Australian Tree in the Tropical Andes: Eucalyptus globulus and the Global Circulation of Urban Nature

• In Event: Plant Transfers Beyond Botany: Histories of Human-mediated Long-distance Dispersals to and from Latin America

English Abstract

In the late nineteenth century, Bogotá imported Eucalyptus globulus from Australia through transnational botanical networks that linked Europe, Latin America, and colonial outposts. This fast-growing tree was celebrated as a modern solution for a treeless highland city, promising shade, timber, and hydrological regulation. Yet the same biological traits that made eucalyptus desirable such as rapid growth, and adaptability soon became liabilities. Excessive size, poor wood quality, and high-water demand clashed with Bogotá’s ecological conditions and urban infrastructure. By the 1920s, the tree was systematically removed from parks and river basins, replaced by native and alternative species. Using traditional historical sources such as press, scientific reports and images in combination with alternative sources such as herbarium collections, this talk traces the global and local trajectories of eucalyptus as a non-human “worker”, from its recruitment through international seed exchanges to its forced retirement when expectations failed. It argues that the rise and fall of eucalyptus in Bogotá exemplifies how modernity mobilized nature across borders, and how these movements produced contested legacies that persist today in peri-urban landscapes and medicinal practices.

Author

• Diego Molina, Royal Holloway, University of London