In our village, people paint the bottom part of tree trunks with white lime to protect them from cows and goats. When I was little you saw this on almost every tree. But now and then I’d see a tree that was white all the way from top to bottom, as if someone had given it a bath in limewater.
The white tree from my childhood
You could see these trees from far away. They were so tall and such a different colour that you couldn’t miss them. I used to think they must taste really good, and that’s why they got so much lime. But how? How did anyone climb that high, and how did they paint it so neatly? I wondered about it a lot and never found an answer. Later I learned that nobody had painted them at all. The bark itself was white. At first I found that hard to accept. I kept shaking the trees or poking them with a stick to see if the lime would come off. It never did. It really was the bark.
Sometimes I’d also notice the bark peeling off by itself, the way it does on guava or arjun trees. For a while I was sure it was a cinnamon tree, and I also ‘knew’ that bay leaves came from it. I got so many things wrong back then, and had so many strange ideas going round in my head. Thinking about it now still makes me laugh for no reason at all.
One of our neighbours lived by the road, and right next to his house stood one of these huge trees. I asked him what it was called, but he couldn’t tell me anything. He only said that neither he nor his father had planted it. Because it was by the road, I saw it every time I passed. I got to know this unknown friend pretty well.
I grew a bit older and started high school, and I noticed a few of the same trees at one side of the bazaar. I went there often, and after a while a man told me what it was. Eucalyptus, he said. I was a little embarrassed, because I had told him it was a cinnamon tree. He said these trees were planted for their oil. What oil, though? Cooking oil, oil for cars, or the oil you put in your hair? All sorts of oils went through my head, but I didn’t have the nerve to ask. Who knew what he’d say, and then I’d be embarrassed all over again. That was where my learning about the white eucalyptus stopped, because I never found out anything more.
Meeting it again at a seminar
Fast forward to university, and I heard my old friend’s name again at a seminar. Farid Uddin Ahmed sir talked about eucalyptus for quite a while. The trunk grows very thick, which means the wood is much stronger and longer lasting than most. I also learned from him that the tree takes up a huge amount of water. It releases different chemicals into the air around it, which helps keep mosquitoes away. And it gives good quality oil. He told us a few other things too, and between them they answered every question I’d had as a child. It felt good. Getting answers you didn’t even go looking for always feels good.
He kept talking and we all listened closely. He said the trees that grow naturally in our country don’t give very good timber, so some eucalyptus was brought in from abroad and planted along the roads as a trial. He also said there are a lot of wrong ideas about this tree here. People say nothing else will grow under it, for example, which is simply not true.
In India, next door, it used to be planted in rice fields as a shade tree, but now people are discouraged from doing that, only because of that same mistaken idea. It is true that it’s a very thirsty tree. It takes up about three or four times as much water as other trees. And the wood is so dense that sawmills sometimes don’t want it, in case it breaks their machines. I can’t remember right now what else sir told us that day.
A leaf that smelled of lemon
Anyway, my time with this lovely tree didn’t end there. Not long ago I was sitting at TSC on campus with friends, all of us chatting, when a eucalyptus leaf landed right next to me. It had a beautiful shape, curved like a crescent moon. It felt like the leaf was quietly asking me to pick it up. So I did, and as soon as I held it I got a strong smell of lemon from somewhere. I looked around to see if a jhalmuri or barobhaja seller had come by. No, nobody. So where was the smell coming from? Was it this leaf?
Without wasting any time I tore one side of it, and the smell got even stronger. I found a few more leaves and tore those too, just to be sure. Yes, the smell was coming from the leaves. Being sure only made me more surprised. How could a eucalyptus leaf smell like a lemon leaf?
Shahidul Islam Shamim, Tahmid Chowdhury Rasif and Konok Kanti Das were sitting with me. I handed them the leaves and asked, “Do you smell the same thing?” They were just as surprised. We joked that next time we have tea we’ll drop one of these leaves in and call it lemon tea.
For a while now we’ve had some pretty serious storms. Branches keep breaking off the trees around Curzon Hall, and it scares me. Not for my own life, for the trees. I feel sorry for them. Huge branches are snapping right off and big trees are being pulled up by the roots. Yesterday a big eucalyptus branch came down. It was full of lovely clusters of flowers, white and round, a little like the flowers of a jamrul (wax apple) tree. Okay, I’ll admit I was a bit happy to get the chance to photograph them, but I never want to take pictures that way. After holding a couple of the flowers I noticed later that my fingers had gone black. I didn’t know why at the time.
Its real name: Corymbia citriodora
When I got home I thought, I don’t even know the proper name of my childhood friend. That’s not right. So I sat down to look it up and started collecting information, the correct kind.
Looking for the name brought a new problem. So many of them seemed like the same tree. It looked most like Eucalyptus alba, but nothing I read about that one mentioned a lemon smell. So what now? I called my personal helpline. Yes, I asked Shamim to tell me what this eucalyptus really was. For the past few days I had believed that every eucalyptus leaf smells of lemon, but that isn’t true either. Only the lemon eucalyptus has this, none of the others. Its scientific name is Corymbia citriodora (Hook.) K.D. Hill & L.A.S. Johnson, and the name says it all, because citriodora means lemon scented. A synonym is Eucalyptus citriodora Hook.
Funnily enough, some botanists used to think it was a variety of Eucalyptus maculata, which later turned out to be wrong. And while we’re on the subject, there’s more. These trees in the Myrtaceae family are called eucalyptus, but they aren’t true eucalyptus. That was how they were classed until the 1990s, but molecular studies then showed that Corymbia is a little different from Eucalyptus and quite close to Angophora. So the three genera together are now called eucalypts. Even after the correction, people still call these trees eucalyptus. The tree comes from Australia and the islands around it, but by now it grows almost all over the world.
What it is good for
The tree is known for quite a few useful things. Its oil is sold as citriodiol, and around 31 compounds have been found in it. About 81.3 percent of it is one compound called citronellal, though this varies a little from place to place. It also contains citronellol, citronellyl acetate, alpha-terpineol, limonene, beta-pinene, alpha-pinene, p-cymene, spathulenol and some polyphenolic acids. The oil keeps insects away, mosquitoes most of all. Mature leaves give off p-menthane-3,8-diol on their own, which is why you don’t find mosquitoes around these trees. The oil can also be used as a natural preservative, and since it gets rid of bad smells you sometimes see it listed as an ingredient in sprays.
Because of a compound called eucalyptol, eucalyptus is famous all over the world for coughs, colds and an itchy throat. It is used quite successfully for bronchitis, asthma and sinusitis. On cuts and scrapes it works as an antimicrobial, antiseptic and antifungal.
Oh, I almost forgot to mention it. These eucalypts are also called gum trees. When a branch breaks, a sticky sap comes out, and that’s why my hands got black marks after holding the flowers that day. By the end of it all I loved this tree even more. It has a place in my heart now, and one day it will have a place next to my house too.
The medicinal uses mentioned here are for general interest only. Please talk to a doctor before using any plant to treat an illness.
References
- N. S. Nowroz Jahan (2007), Bangladesher Phuler Rajya (in Bangla).
- Encyclopedia of Flora & Fauna of Bangladesh, vol. 9.
- Abdul Ghani (2003), Medicinal Plants of Bangladesh, Asiatic Society of Bangladesh.
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corymbia_citriodora
- https://www.researchgate.net/publication/264868532
- https://www.researchgate.net/publication/226503551
- https://www.researchgate.net/publication/325718228
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