Southern Blue Gum

Long before eucalyptus oil lined pharmacy shelves, Aboriginal Australians turned to the leaves and bark of blue gum eucalypts for wounds, fevers, and the aches of everyday life, often crushing the leaves to release their sharp, camphor-like scent for inhaling. Eucalyptus bicostata, known regionally as Eurabbie, became one of the tall timber and oil trees settlers prized both for its hardy lumber and for the cineole-rich oil pressed from its foliage. As colonial and later Western herbalism adopted eucalyptus, steam inhalations and chest rubs made from its leaves and oil became a household staple for the stuffy head and heavy chest that come with a winter cold. That legacy lives on today, mostly through the same gentle, external rituals that first made this tree beloved.