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Blackwood acacia is native to the forests of Tasmania and southeastern Australia. It has always been an important timber tree in its native zone, and the tree’s hard wood made strong boomerangs, clubs, and shields for Australia’s aboriginal people.

Mary Ellen Pleasant and Her Blue Gums

MARY Ellen Pleasant, an African American woman often called California’s “Mother of Civil Rights,” planted the row of mature blue gums (Eucalyptus globulus) at 1661 Octavia Street, near Bush Street, in Pacific Heights. Though born a slave in 1817, she came to own a sprawling 30-room estate at this address, which has been called the western terminus of the Underground Railway that helped to usher fugitive slaves to freedom in pre–Civil War times.

In fact, once freed herself, Pleasant spent many of her early years helping fugitive slaves escape the American South. Pursued by the law, she headed to gold rush San Francisco in 1852, where with her business acumen she parlayed an inheritance from her first husband into a small fortune. She used her wealth to continue supporting African American rights. In 1868, long before the civil rights battles of the next century, Pleasant brought a lawsuit against two San Francisco streetcar lines that had denied her the right to ride because of her race. Her suit ultimately went to the California Supreme Court, where she won the right for all African Americans to ride the streetcars.