Curious Central West

Why are peppercorn trees always planted at schools?

Updated September 13, 2018 18:08:33

Have you ever wondered how the trees on your street were chosen? The answer is more complex than you might think.

Curious Central West questioner Robert MacGregor grew up in the shade of an old peppercorn tree, on the road between Forbes and Parkes.

"Down the back of our farm is a spot where my Dad went to school at Back Yamma," he said.

"And where that school was, the only thing remaining is a peppercorn tree."

Mr MacGregor has always wondered why the South American species was chosen to accompany early school houses.

"Often you'll see peppercorn trees and you'll [think]; there must have been a school there once," he said.

"It's always intrigued me — why peppertrees?" he said.

"They're not native, they're known to attract white ants and you wouldn't think they're the kind of thing that British immigrants latched on to, but they did."

The answer to Mr MacGregor's question leads us all the way to the sandstone steps of Sydney's Botanic Gardens, across to Adelaide and right to the heart of Australia's burgeoning nationalism in the late 19th century.

Street trees and the role of the Botanic Gardens

Sydney in the 1800s was an international melting pot.

Far more multicultural and global than perhaps we credit it as today, Sydney's botany was at the helm of its expansion in science and identity.

"The Botanic Gardens in Sydney is a scientific institution that, in the mid-to-late 19th century, was doing a huge amount of work bringing plants into Australia for all sorts of reasons," Jodi Frawley said.

Dr Frawley is an environmental historian, specialising in what she described as the "transnational networks of botanical exchange".

"Largely they were economic reasons; importing forestry trees, crop plantings, helping with weeds and indigo and those sort of things," she said.

"But one of the lesser known things is that the Botanic Gardens were absolutely critical in what our urban landscapes looked like.

"And that was not just the cities, but all of the regional towns."

Specifically, it was the men in charge.

The two men that helped shape our streetscapes

Charles Moore was the director of Sydney's Botanic Gardens from 1848 to 1896, after which his successor Joseph Henry Maiden took over until 1924.

These men guided the Botanic Gardens' research and propagation, as well the import and export of tree and plant species, subliminally curating the landscape of all of New South Wales.

"One of the interesting things to me is that each of them [Moore and Maiden] had a kind of idea — a different kind of idea — about what cities should look like," Dr Frawley said.

"Moore liked to send a variety of different sorts of trees for street planting, so [in] places that were established during his period, you might see a whole range of different sorts of trees.

"But when Joseph Maiden took that position, he very much like to see uniform rows of trees, very much about drawing the eye to the horizon."

How powerful a notion that two men's personal taste and preference, amidst the prevailing thought at the time, would cement the aesthetic of most towns and cities throughout NSW to this day.

The nationalism of trees

Moore and Maiden were bot very concerned with Australia's place in the empire and exchanged enthusiastically with other countries within it and outside it.

But Maiden had taken the reins just as the Australian colony was starting to question its identity.

Hand in hand with a rising nationalism, was an emphasis on culture and interconnectivity, meaning indigenous species were being mingled with exotics, almost a botanical representation of Australia's finding its place on the world stage.

Dr Frawley cited the sudden surge in wattle's popularity at this time, as an example of Australians "wanting to plant themselves into the soil".

"But at the same time, there's this whole transnational movement of plants as well," she said.

"[Sydney Botanic Gardens] were sending out these exotics — a lot of country towns have camphor laurels, flame trees — very northern European sorts of trees."

There was also an emerging theory that southern hemisphere species transplanted well due common environmental conditions — furthering the globalised position taken by botanists at the time.

"One of the other things that's not very well known is that through our transfer and trading relationships between these botanic institutions and scientific institutions, we had very strong ties to South America — to Brazil and Argentina in particular," Dr Frawley said.

"A lot of eucalyptus went all over America — to California and places like that.

"But a lot of their tree stock came to Australia — one is the jacaranda."

Schinus areira: the peppercorn tree

Another one is the peppercorn tree.

Schinus areira, as is its scientific name, is native to South America and came to Australia via this strong trading link with the Americas.

Interestingly, its dispersal across NSW was not via Sydney's Botanic Gardens, but Adelaide's.

Craig Burton, adjunct professor at the University of Western Australia is a landscape architect and arboriculture historian.

He explains how the peppercorn tree's immediate success in Adelaide's alkaline soils saw George Francis, the director of Adelaide Botanic Gardens, enthusiastically promote the species to other dry parts of the nation.

"It was planted in Sydney very early in the 1830s but it didn't really take off," Professor Burton said.

"But it took off in Adelaide because of the alkaline soils, and the colonists of South Australia actually produced them and they traded them up the rivers before the rail system got in.

"Its biggest impact was coming up the paddle steamers into outback NSW. "

Why was it always planted at schools?

The trend of the peppercorn tree being consistently planted in schoolyards could be more perceived than real.

"They are targeted because of their ability to deal with the unpredictable climates," Professor Burton said.

"And not just schools, they were planted everywhere — parks, streets, railway stations everywhere.

"There is an association [with schools] because people experienced them having gone to school particularly in the west [of NSW] — the central west, the western slopes and plains, the far west.

"The heyday of schinus was the 1890s — probably most of the old ones still existing are from that period."

Jodi Frawley believes their use would have extended to form as well as function, with the peppercorn tree's weeping foliage.

"This was really about ensuring that kids had places that were shady, as well as beautiful, to be in when they weren't actually in the classroom," Dr Frawley said.

The enduring nature of tree choices

The reach and permanency of the botanic gardens in shaping the aesthetic of the whole state is remarkable.

Charles Moore's penchant for figs sees Sydney's streets still dripping with languid Morton Bay tentacles.

Joseph Maiden's obsession with Canary Palms means pairs of palms still stand sentinel at the entrances to many crumbling homesteads.

Dr Frawley believes botanic gardens are unique nodes of science and culture, whose relevance evolves with society.

"Those botanic gardens are still critically important in engaging in current concerns," she said.

"In the 19th century they were helping us establish as a nation, now they are doing a scientific job.

"These amazing relationships that were built with all these international bodies — which is why we have all that material in Australia — is still able to evolve and respond to current concerns.

"They are amazing places."

Who asked the question?

Rob Macgregor has lived in Back Yamma all his life, a town that lies halfway between Forbes and Parkes.

The school house that originally piqued his interest lies on his father's property, and his father attended school there.

Mr MacGregor's question answered more than just why he's surrounded by peppercorn trees.

"It's interesting on a number of levels - I live on a street in Parkes that's lined with jacaranda trees."

"It's fascinating to think about it being just the work of two people."

Topics: historic-gardens, history-education, history, rural, horticulture, landscape-gardening, public-gardens, childrens-gardens, botanical-gardens, gardening, urban-development-and-planning, parkes-2870, sydney-2000, adelaide-5000, bathurst-2795, orange-2800

First posted September 12, 2018 07:04:11