Eucalyptus pulverulenta ‘Baby Blue’ – 1 of our most popular Eucs

Buyer beware! I am sorry to say that there are several nefarious practices being exercised by the horticultural industry to con you into buying Eucalyptus gunnii in its cute round blue-leaved juvenile form and calling it Baby Blue.

Being polite – this is patently misleading!  E gunnii Baby Blue does not botanically exist.   All these people are selling is Eucalyptus gunnii and calling it Baby Blue, and these trees will mature into a green, long-leaved tree at 80ft tall, if you don’t prune it.    Eucalyptus pulverulenta ‘Baby Blue’ never produces adult foliage – they remain cute, blue and roundish – kidney-bean shaped.

The correct form is the entirely different species Eucalyptus pulverulenta ‘Baby Blue‘ and it is a much more difficult to produce a good quality nursery plant than gunnii.

Further more, E gunni does smell strikingly of eucalyptol, but is it NOT the same aroma as Eucalyptus pulverulenta ‘Baby Blue’ which has a sweet softness to the very strong fragrance. There are difficult aromatic oils at play in Baby Blue.   Don’t be conned into buying E. gunnii Baby Blue – you are buying E gunnii – a wolf in sheep’s clothing!  Apologies for the rant! ?

The Story: Very widely grown in Southern California, Mexico, Europe and Australasia, Eucalyptus pulverulenta ‘Baby Blue’ has long been a favourite of the cut-foliage industry with the stems being highly sought-after as freshly picked or dried for floral art. It is a naturally dwarf species, rarely exceeding 3m and can be grown as a clipped shrub. It all started when seed from Australia was sent, in the 1890’s or thereabout, to a cut foliage grower in California.

The Grower selected and selected the best of the best and eventually (several decades of selecting!) arrived at a reliably consistent named cultivar ‘Baby Blue’.  Some time later, the Italians were suffering from a bad case of FOMO – envious of this fabulous foliage for floristry, some seed ‘wound up’ in Italy at a nursery!  So now there are some serious large plantations of ‘Baby Blue’ not only in California, but also in Italy, but not so in Oz!

Biometrics for Eucalyptus pulverulenta ‘Baby Blue’

Shoots ‘n Leaves:  Eucalyptus pulverulenta ‘Baby Blue’ has very ornamental foliage. Young shoots are a soft violet with a white bloom. Juvenile foliage is an intense silvery blue. The young rounded leaves appear to ‘grasp’ the stem. Adult foliage is indistinguishable from the juvenile foliage. Smaller than straight wild type species E. pulverulenta. Rounded glaucous/blue aromatic leaves crowded on stems.

Bark: Blue when young. Smooth silvery grey, sometimes with olive, gold and russet tones.

Flowers: White fluffy flowers in profusion arranged in whorls around the stems, whilst still quite a young tree in mid Winter through to early Spring.

Leaf Aroma: Very strong typical fresh menthol Eucalyptus aroma.

Rate of Growth: Slow growing at less than 1m per year.  Is quite slow to get established for a Eucalyptus – still fast for an evergreen shrub.

Height in maturity: If trained as a standard tree to grow upwards, Eucalyptus pulverulenta ‘Baby Blue’ could reach approx. 3-4 m. Responds well to regular annual pruning to keep it small either as a bushy shrub or shrub-onna-stick.

If maintained as a coppiced/pollarded specimen, it will take on the size and shape of a Viburnum plicatum shrub, in that it tends to grow in layers.

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With careful pruning, Eucalyptus pulverulenta ‘Baby Blue’ can be trained into a nicely shaped bush; left to its own devices it can be described as having an ‘interesting architecture’.

Click here for further advice on pruning can be found in our Guidance Notes

Click here to visit our pruning video

Hardiness: Tolerating down to around -10 °C to -14 °C mark, once mature. Hardiness in Eucalyptus is governed by provenance of seed, how it is grown (i.e. high nitrogen levels reduces cold tolerance), age of the tree – the older your tree, the hardier it will be. Younger Eucs are more susceptible to frost damage.

Hardiness in Eucalyptus is governed by

• provenance of seed (all our seed is sourced from frosty or cold locations)
• how it is grown (i.e. high nitrogen levels reduces cold tolerance),
• the age of the tree – the older your tree, the hardier it will be. Younger Eucs are more susceptible to frost damage.
• how long it has been planted in the ground. The deeper you can encourage the rooting by digging a deep planting pit at the time of installation, the quicker your tree will establish and you will increase its ability to survive cold winters. See our planting notes for more details.

For more information on how to increase the winter hardiness of your Eucalyptus – click here to see our Guidance Notes.  These notes on how to help your Euc become more hardy in your garden setting are quite long and I’ve been told ‘not for the faint-hearted’!  They are meant to be quite all-encompassing and well-intentioned. You can always skip to the last page to look at the salient points!

Lignotuber: Eucalyptus pulverulenta ‘Baby Blue’ has one, which is a good thing!      Eucalyptus pulverulenta ‘Baby Blue’  will regenerate off the lignotuber if cut down by man, beast or nature. It also produces many shoots from epicormic buds lying dormant beneath the bark higher up the tree; so Eucalyptus pulverulenta ‘Baby Blue’ will respond extremely well to both coppicing and pollarding practices.   Coppicing = pruning off practically at ground level. Pollarding is pruning off such that a short trunk (aka a stock) is left in the ground and a shrubby structure is developed above this.

Ecology:   
Bees: All Eucalyptus produce flowers with nectar and pollen, but this species has particularly spectacular flowers making it a real draw for honey bees looking for winter foraging.