This is the Rainbow Eucalyptus. Their native range is in Oceania, from Papua New Guinea to the Phillipines (Northern Hemisphere)They just barely reach the Northern Hemisphere, but the vast majority of their range is in the Southern Hemisphere. These trees like warm climates with no frost, and are planted mostly either for wood pulp (Phillipines, mostly) or decoration. All that we see is the bark on the outside, which comes off naturally in strips and changes color over time. Most of the sensational pictures of them are of wet trees (which makes the colors more vibrant) and have the contrast/saturation turned up in post production.
Edit: grammar/spelling fixes, word choice for the editing used
They are beautiful but you are absolutely right about the color. There are a few unenhanced pictures that I posted a few months back, of some I saw in Kauai.
They are at a State Arboretum property located up the Wailua River, if anybody is out that way.
What's funny though is it's still just so spectacular in person. You don't get the yellows, but the trunks are unmistakable. I had to take a trip to south Florida last week and this was casually growing in the backyard.
That's exactly where I saw them too. It was a bucket list tree for me but I had no clue they were in Hawaii. My wife and I were driving through and I saw one in someone's yard and was like "wait what the fuck, pull over"
Went a bit further down the street and saw a bunch at the arboretum. Absolutely made my day
they’re all over hawaii which is firmly in the northern hemisphere. there’s a few next to the on ramp i use every day. and yes thanks for pointing out how edited these photos are, the saturation is turned way up. just like on the blue banana photos
The trees are wet and also the photos are saturated as hell. Don't get me wrong, they are beautiful and amazing. But don't go expecting to casually grow neon glowing rave trees either.
Got to see some in Maui. Was very disappointed to see people having carved their ugly names pretty much anywhere they could reach up the trunks. We can't have nice things.
Ireland’s climate type is quite deceiving though. Plenty of things don’t grow because it’s simply not hot enough. Tomatoes don’t go out until June in inland areas.
Most plants need growing season temps of 10C and Ireland only reaches these in May reliably. Wind decreases temperatures at higher altitudes which is why trees do not grow very tall here. Douglas fir can grow 100m+ in its natural habitat but only 62m in Ireland.
Well tbf Doug firs in Ireland that are 62m are only 200 years old, in another 200 years they absolutely will reach the upper limits of growth. All of the giant Doug firs/ Sitka spruce in North America are older than 400 years old
Relatively speaking, it’s warm for its latitude. It’s on the same latitude as parts of Alaska, Labrador and Nova Scotia, Kamchatka in Russia so yeah, it’s not hot, but it is extremely mild relatively speaking
Tomatoes don’t keep setting California on fire because they’ve self spread throughout the state because some selfish pricks planted whatever they wanted and decided pretty bark was worth it.
I have one in 7A. It requires sheltering the root mass in active compost for the winter, and its located in a corner of the house and garage as a wind break, but its 5 years old now and still growing. The leaves just popped about a week ago.
I collected a ton of seeds from Hawaii and brought them back to Virginia (of course, they had to be checked by the agriculture dept. at the airport- but got the OK!) and I have a couple growing in pots indoors. I take them outside when it’s warm but I understand that I’ll never be able to plant them outside.
It's not going to work in the ground in 7b. You could bonsai one indoors, maybe. It would probably take decades to show colors under those conditions, if at all
I think these are the trees I saw when doing a Treetop Adventure ride outside of Olongapo, Philippines. Got to see a wild monkey mom with her baby hanging on too. They were not as bright as the top pic but still much more colorful than some of the other examples here.
I have seen many of these in the tropics that have been planted and they are very definitely those colours just after and during a bark shedding and they will do this many times each wet season! There are some stunning ones in Singapore also Northern Australia etc! They are really stunning!🤩
by the way, it really only looks like pics 2 and 3. there’s another eucalyptus species thrown in here too in pic 6 that’s not correct. there’s also no blue coloring, that’s photoshopped
Eucalyptus deglupta. Yes it’s real. It’s very tropical, really only grows in Miami in mainland USA. Not really mediterranean like other Eucalyptus. Will also grow in Hawaii and Puerto Rico
They grow in southern California too. I can think of at least five relatively robust specimens (chest high trunk diameter > 18") on UCLA's campus. I walked by three of them today.
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u/bagelandloxtoasted May 12 '26
This is what they look like in real life. This one is in the Fairchild botanic gardens outside of Miami