Throughout this book, I generally refer to trees by their common names. I decided to do this after considerable thought because I realise many ordinary readers would find botanical names rather daunting on the page, even if they were simply included in brackets. At the same time I know that many other readers, especially those with a keen interest in trees, much prefer botanical names. In New Zealand, botanical names are used routinely by everyone involved in forestry. Some years ago a New Zealand forester visited Lanark to have a look at my tree-planting program. He saw a group of trees growing beside the road and asked what they were. I replied, ‘Spotted gums.’ He said, ‘Spotted gums? What are you talking about? I want to know what species they are.’ For some reason, I could not remember their botanical name, Eucalyptus maculata. He obviously thought he was dealing with an ignoramus and probably lost much of his interest in what I was doing at Lanark. Since then, for the record, spotted gums have been reclassified as Corymbia maculata.
In any case, the use of common names can cause confusion, given that the same common name can apply to quite different types of trees in different parts of Australia. Blue gum is an example. In our pantry there is a jar of blue gum honey that we were given by a nephew who lives just over the border in South Australia, barely an hour’s drive away. There, ‘blue gum’ is the common name for Eucalyptus leucoxylon. In Victoria, though, ‘blue gum’ is Eucalyptus globulus, an entirely different tree now grown in vast plantations for woodchips. I can recommend Eucalyptus leucoxylon honey, by the way. It is one of the best I have tried.
In spite of all these reservations, however, I have opted to use common names in most cases to avoid clogging the narrative, although the botanical name will also be included in parenthesis in the first reference to each tree or other kind of plant. Moreover, for every common name mentioned in the text, a botanical name is listed in an appendix at the back.