They are full of character and can be found across almost all of Australia — especially in the heart of our huge country.

Voting has closed on our poll for National Science Week and after three rounds of fierce competition, Australia’s favourite native tree has been crowned … it’s the RIVER RED GUM!

“The river red gum is the diviner of our landscape, plotting watercourses all over our arid continent”, says Paul West in the Catalyst documentary exploring our favourite trees, in which a panel of experts chose their own number one.

The Iconic Red River Gum

It ended up being a gumtree extravaganza at the top of the leader board, with the mighty river red nabbing a comprehensive win over the stoic snow gum, with the glorious ghost gum coming in third.

The Moreton Bay fig  — the first non-gum — was a close fourth, less than 30 votes behind the ghost gum.

The mountain ash (the expert’s choice) finished in fifth place.

Last of the 10 trees left standing for the final round of voting was the golden wattle, Australia’s floral emblem.

We did a full countdown of the top 10 in our live blog, which you can now look back on.

The full placings are linked here, but let’s just take a moment to revel in the glory of the river red gum, to marvel at Eucalyptus calmaldulensis — and maybe practise saying its scientific name a few times as well.

Of the nearly 270,000 votes that went into our search for Australia’s favourite tree, the river red gum got over 31,000.

It proved to be an enduring favourite, snaffling over 18 per cent of the votes in the final round.

Source
ABC News