Drew, I can send you some seed of a few of the varieties you listed if you are interested - they grow locally or as street trees in my area. Im pleased that you are interested in our beautiful aussie flora. Cheers

g'day roy, there are around 3 leaf eating bugs for gum trees they all look similar to each other but surprisingly have different scientific names (don't have them to hand) they look a bit like an oversize lady bird, our method of treatment as to do an early morn' collectin and drop them into a bottle with some kero' in it same treatment for their larva when you find it. these bugs can all but denude a tree of foliage but for the main the tree will revive over winter, i think the best control method is to attract the noisy miners into you garden they will take care of the larva and hence the beetle, the honey eaters will also help. search for eucalyptus leaf eaters. this may help len Here is a link that might be useful: lens garden page

Thanks for the replies. It seems eucalyptus grafting is more hush hush than fight club. Looks like we'll be going with a grafted C. ficifolia but I have started growing a few E. deglupta and E. gregsoniana from seed just from curiosity. Out of 100 seeds, I have four deglupta seedlings coming along and 60 out of 100 gregsoniana shooting up. I understand Sydney and Melbourne botanical garden's troubles. I'll have to check out the Alloxylon flammeum. Sounds familiar.

For the record I work in a bush crew company and know a bit about weed control. Now glyphosphate is great for killing weedy grasses/monocotyledons but, despite the false advertising, it is generally ineffective or less effective against broad leaf weeds/dicotyledons. Now remember that plants with strappy leaves e.g. Dianella/Flax Lilies are, like grasses, monocotyledons and will be greatly effected by roundup. It definately will do little or nothing to Soursob/Oxalis. For this weed and many others like it that have bulbs you need to use much stronger broad leaf/woody weed specific herbicides such as KambaM, Brushoff/Esteem or Garlon. I recently checked up on regulations regarding these and it seems that, in Victoria, you are allowed to use amine formulations of these herbicides without an Agricultural Chemical Users Permit. But I recomend that these should be used with caution in terms of OH&S and environment. Painting preparations of these on to weeds would be OK as long as you wear appropriate safety gear. Bearing in mind that glyphosphate does not work that well on docotyledons, most native shrubs are not greatly effected by small amounts of it. The foliage that is hit by the glyphosphate will obviously die however unless you some how accidently spray 100% of foliage it is highly unlikely that the tree or shrub will be killed outright. If weedy grasses are the problem then you can use Fusilade which is a specific grass killer. Unless anyone out there knows of any exceptions, this can be sprayed over all dicotyledons, sedges and rushes. Ideal for a garden beds infested with couch or kikuyu. Not suitable for use near edge of water however.