Eucalyptus stellulata ‘Kiandra’ – Black Sally – 1 of our Amazing Swamp Gums

Eucalyptus stellulata ‘Kiandra’- Black Sally

How to use in the landscape and/or garden: How to grow or train it to get the best out of it

Eucalyptus stellulata is a beautiful, easy, relatively moderate sized tree, which can be grown as a single stemmed specimen or a multi-stemmed tree.

It develops a dense crown in maturity and so is a good choice if you want a tree to provide some shade.

It has an elegant relaxed habit, reminiscent of a weeping willow in its formative years, more upright in maturity, making it an attractive tree for the landscape.

A star performer as a winter feature tree especially when underlit.

Growing a full-sized standard: planting the tree and running away is an option, but it won’t necessarily give you the best results.

We suggest you maintain a leading shoot and tip prune the lateral shoots to encourage bushiness.  Keep all the sides shoots as they are building up the strength of the main trunk. The tree will shed its lower branches and crown raise itself naturally over time

• To grow a large specimen, leave the tree to grow up naturally thereafter.
• For a small tree, tip prune the leader when it reaches 1.2m, thereafter let the head develop. Then prune the tree every March 18^th and end of May to keep your tree small and bushy.

For more, see our guidance notes for growing specimen Eucalyptus in our Help and Advice section.

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Growing shrub-on-a-stick clipped standard: this is an opportunity to grow a Eucalyptus in a confined space like a courtyard and also control its overall size. You can produce a small tree on a trunk with a height of anywhere between 3m (8ft) and 4m (12ft). Prune back growth every March 18^th or thereabouts and tip prune the annual growth back by up to 90% at the end of May. Light tip pruning can be done again during July, but no later. Don’t prune from August through to February.

Growing a multi-stemmed bush or tree.  E stellulata  responds well to coppicing and readily produces a multi-stemmed specimen  responds well to coppicing, once it has attained a trunk of some 125 mm in diameter and readily produces a multi-stemmed specimen

Why would you want to do this?

To create:

• a tree with more body or ‘mass’ of branches and foliage for screening purposes. Once grown back up to its full potential, it will now have several main trunks
• an attractive multi-stemmed architectural tree, especially if it has exceptional bark
• to control height, whereby your Euc can be usefully maintained anywhere between 3m (8ft) and 7m (20ft), but genetically it will want to grow taller if ignored.

REMEMBER: No grass, no weeds and a thick boring bark chip mulch, to a depth of 150 mm (6 inches) are essential to assist with good establishment. Our research trials have demonstrated that grass around the trunk of Eucalyptus prevent the trees from quickly establishing and can completely stop them from growing.

Pot Culture outdoors:  E. stellulata  can be successfully grown as a multi-stemmed shrub in a container provided you are prepared to pot on at the recommended intervals and to supply it with sufficient water and food during the growing season.

Always keep pot-grown Eucalyptus in the air-pot container system for healthy and happy trees.😊  They do not thrive in smooth-walled containers ☹

For information on how to successfully grow Eucs in pots, visit our Blog entitled ‘How to grow a Eucalyptus in a pot and keep it alive!’

Hedge-Screens a case study:  At Grafton Nursery in 2012, a single row of 8 E. stellulata were planted to provide a light tracery of evergreen foliage. The trees were allowed to grow up to around 3-4m and pollarded every March down to around 2.4m (but this could have been lower at 1.5m and still been effective) and tip pruned end of May to control height and maintain sufficient foliage to screen our kitchen garden from the house. As of 2020, the trunks measured 125cm (5 inches) in diameter. The trunks were bare from ground up to around 1m. The foliage screened from around 1.2m up to around 3m. This proved to be very successful. The pretty weeping foliage was attractive all year round, but particularly impressive in Spring, being sage green with rose, gold and pale lime.

Floral Art:  E. stellulata produces premium cut foliage for Flower Farmers and floral art.  We find that it is slower to take off as a species, preferring to take its time in getting its ‘feet under the table’, but after an additional year or so, it takes off fairly quickly. Delightful fragrant foliage with a weeping habit, great for wedding work.

Firewood Production:  E. stellulata is not on our selected species list for Biomass or Firewood.

Rural/Agricultural:

• Good shade tree for livestock to stand under. Eucalyptus provide a cool environment for horses, cattle, llamas, sheep to shelter from the sun on hot days, as the mass evaporation of water through the leaves creates a cool shady canopy beneath.
• Green foliaged species, which looks for comfortable and not ‘foreign’ in a rural setting – reminiscent of Willow Trees

Ecology:

• All Eucalyptus produce flowers with nectar and pollen, but this species has particularly spectacular flowers making it a real draw for honey bees and other pollinators.
• Habitat creation and Game Cover: this species lends itself to providing good trouble-free habitat creation for wildlife and game cover on wet ground, when planted singly or in groups.  Birds enjoy roosting in Eucalyptus trees and Pheasants like rootling around underneath them.
• Chickens: The shredded foliage of stellulata is excellent at keeping Chicken nest boxes and hen houses free of red mites, which detest the presence of Eucalyptol. I used to line our Chicken boxes with shredded leaves, strew the floor and pile up the spindly branches for the chickens to make nests. It was all great till the foxes moved into the next field 🙁

 Environmental:

• Growing on the Coast We have no experience of growing stellulata in a coastal environment.  I suspect it may do well in milder coastal districts, when grown a mile or two inland of the sea, but this needs trialling.  The leaves may get shredded in strong winds.  Do get in touch if you are giving this a go and let us know how you get on.

To make this work, we recommend that:

1. you plant a smaller specimen (1 litre or 3 litre, around 1m-1.2m tall),
2. encourage fast establishment in a deeply prepared planting pit (follow our planting advice), to encourage deep rooting to grow an upright, stable tree
3. Staking will be required
4. Newly planted trees will very likely require a wind break shelter for their first winter in the ground with you
5. Zero grass or weeds during the period of establishment is non-negotiable!

• Shelter Belts and Windbreaks E. stellulata hails from sub-alpine woodland and wet valley bottoms. We posit that it may do well in a mixed stand surrounded by other trees to protect it from aggressive winds. It will contribute to the mix by drawing on ground water making it a better environment for other species to thrive. As a stand-alone species, we don’t think it would be happy in shelter belts/windbreaks as the leaves will shred.

We recommend

• you plant a smaller specimen (less than 1.8m tall in a 1, 3 or 5 litre air-pot)
• encourage fast establishment in a deeply prepared planting pit (follow our planting advice), to encourage deep rooting to grow an upright, stable tree
• Staking will be required
• In exposed locations, newly planted trees will very likely require a wind break shelter for their first winter in the ground with you
• Zero grass or weeds during the period of establishment is non-negotiable!
• Drying up wet soils Hailing from soggy valley bottoms in the wild, E. stellulata does prefer a moisture retentive soil and so may do well at drying up a wet UK soil.   E. stellulata is very at home in moist soils, such as a draining clay, draining peaty/loamy soils and draining sandy loams.
• It must be remembered that Eucalyptus are not aquatic like a Mangrove, but several species tolerate flooding for up to 6 months of the year in their native lands. This is a great species to help you regain the use of intermittently boggy ground. Dry up wet ground that intermittently floods, gain remedial treatment for winter boggy ground or which suffers from outflow from a Septic tank system or unwanted intermittent seasonal ‘ponding’.  If you have un-usable winter-wet land, planting a group of swamp gums will help towards draining an area of ground. The timber could possibly be harvested to yield a crop of firewood logs too, if coppiced every 6-8 years.
• Please note: Timber harvested from areas suspected to be contaminated with sewage should never be burned, but could be used in rustic garden construction, bug hotel, bean poles, edging pathways & borders etc.

Small Case Study: At Grafton nursery, several E. stellulata are thriving on our swampy, yellow pH8 clay soil.  A mature ex-show tree is being grown as a mallee towards the bottom end of the large field in winter-swampy conditions.  A couple are thriving in our cut foliage trial plot. A third is being grown as ‘shrub-on-a-stick’, being pruned every couple of years to maintain its height at 3-4m. It has made the ground much more workable and a Bay tree is thriving 1m from the tree.  None of the trees showed stress as a result of the 2022 summer drought, when our field set like concrete with 20cm wide x 60cm deep cracks!

• Sustainable Drainage Systems aka SUDS Needs commercial trialling, but planted singly or in groups, stellulata will most likely draw on drain water percolating into swales or similar. E. stellulata is an ideal candidate for this because it hails from poorly drained sites and cold valley bottoms.  Coppice or pollard every few years if you need to control the overall height of the trees. Eucalyptus draw on ground water for twelve months of the year, unlike willows, which lie dormant for 5 months through the winter.
• Eucalypts grown on continually wet ground The overall height of Eucalypts, grown on continually wet soils in inhabited areas, needs to be considered (as with any tree species of great height), especially in areas subject to strong gales.  Selecting your tree with a radial root-system is vital and therefore only use Air-Pot grown or air-root-pruned stock.  Eucalypts grown in smooth-walled pots are a ticking-timebomb liability and we can speak from personal experience.  Encouraging deep rooting by following our planting recommendations is essential.
• In addition, if your chosen species has the genes to grow taller than 10-12m, it may be prudent to consider pollarding or coppicing after 8 years of growth, to control the height down to around 10m, to mitigate the risk of the trees being forced over in high winds. Once coppiced/pollarded, it is recommended to maintain overall height at 10m or less thereafter. This practice usually only needs carrying out once every 8 years or so.
• Tolerant of cold and exposed growing environments inland stellulata will grow in open fields and pasture, once established.  Possibly not an ideal candidate for high exposed ridges and sites like open moorland, without additional shelter.  It will tolerate frosty valley bottoms.

     We recommend

• you plant a smaller specimen (less than 1.8m tall in a 3 or 5 litre air-pot)
• encourage fast establishment in a deeply prepared planting pit (follow our planting advice), to encourage deep rooting to grow an upright, stable tree
• Staking will be required
• In exposed locations, newly planted trees will very likely require a wind break shelter made from horticultural fleece or sail cloth, for their first winter in the ground with you; this very much depends on the level of exposure
• Zero grass or weeds during the period of establishment is non-negotiable!
• Tolerant of poor stony soils once established  E.stellulata does not require a rich soil and can survive in poor, stony soils.   Tolerant of drier environments, poor stony dry soils once established. It is essential that your Euc. is given our recommended quantity of water for its first 2 growing seasons in your grounds, during its establishment phase before you abandon it to its fate.

There is record of a stand of E. stellulata growing on the dry site of Brumby Point, eastern Victoria, Australia

The tree needs to establish a good, deep root system before it can survive in dry, challenging conditions. No grass, no weeds and a thick bark chip mulch, to a depth of 150 mm (6 inches) are essential to assist with good establishment. Growth on impoverished soils will always be reduced.