Today I'm going to talk about the eucalyptus tree.

The eucalyptus tree

Actually, this is the first time I have seen this word appear in my brain. In my native language I probably already know about this plant. My level of knowledge about it is a vague fantasy and I have absolutely no idea what that tree is and why the eucalyptus tree exists. And fortunately, while I was studying for the IELTS exam, knowledge about this plant gradually appeared in me. 

This is a very common tree here in Australia, a country that in my opinion is an image of fields and kangaroos, where it's also sometimes called the gum tree. First I'm going to talk about why it's important, then I'm going to describe some problems it faces at present.

Right, well the eucalyptus tree is an important tree for lots of reasons. For example, it gives shelter (like a human house) to creatures like birds and bats (in the novel may be an icon for the character vampire), and these and other species also depend on it for food, particularly the nectar(bees and some birds seem to like sweets) from its flowers. So it supports biodiversity (many species and creatures).  It's useful to us humans too because we can kill germs with a disinfectant (like alcohol in medicine) made from oil extracted from eucalyptus leaves.

The eucalyptus grows all over Australia and the tree can live for up to four hundred years. So it's alarming that all across the country, numbers of eucalyptus are falling because are dying off prematurely. So what are the reasons for this?

One possible reason is the disease. As far back as the 1970s, the trees started getting a disease called Mundulla Yellow.

Mundulla Yellow

The tree's leaves would gradually turn yellow, then the tree would die. It wasn't until 2004 that they found the cause of the problem was lime or calcium hydroxide to give its proper chemical name, which was being used in the construction of roads. The lime was being washed away into the ground and affecting the roots of the eucalyptus trees nearby. What it was doing was preventing the trees from sucking up the iron they needed for healthy growth. When this was injected back into the affected trees, they immediately recovered.