A Love-Hate Relationship
Arriving home after a fortnight away, our streetscape has changed. In our two-week absence, the Cape Lilac tree on the verge outside our house has burst forth in spring blossom. It’s a big tree, well over ten metres tall. It is spectacular in flower. In that moment as we near home, I love it: love its clusters of tiny lilac flowers, its bright green leaves, and the way it dominates the street. I can’t help but admire it. But over the past two dozen years I haven’t always loved it. I have long had a love-hate relationship with this tree.
‘Weedy interloper,’ I thought when we bought the house. I filled the verge with native plants and ignored the Cape lilac (Melia azedarach). Later, I found out it has a closely related Australian sibling Melia azedarach var. astralasica, endemic to the Kimberley and across northern Australia down into New South Wales. Apparently the variety that is now naturalised here in Perth originates in the Himalayas. It can be found in many bushland areas, but is not considered to be a great concern as far as weeds go, especially as it provides much-needed habitat for the endangered Carnaby’s black cockatoo. It is a pretty tree and was widely planted as a street tree, hence the one on my verge.
I planted a small vegetable garden in one part of my front yard and cursed the Cape lilac for shading my veggies and sucking moisture and nutrients from the soil. ‘You should get rid of that Cape lilac,’ a friend said as he left our house one day. I looked up at the tree. I wasn’t so sure. I like trees, even if this wasn’t one of my favourites. But this one certainly had its downside.
It wasn’t the tree’s fault, but one day I watched, helpless, as my son fell from the Cape lilac’s branches. Both he and the tree were smaller then. He was two or three metres above ground standing on one branch and reaching up to a higher one to pull himself up further. I was trying not to be the type of parent who yelled ‘be careful’ at every passing adventure. The branch he was standing on and the one he was pulling himself up onto both cracked and broke. He fell, spinning around the tree trunk and hitting a lower branch on his way to the ground. He grazed his back and wounded his pride but was otherwise unscathed. The Cape lilac remained a favoured climbing for many years and I continued to resist telling him, and later his younger sister, to be careful.
Family lore tells of my eldest brother also meeting misadventure with a Cape lilac. As a toddler he ate berries from one. The berries, along with all other parts of the tree, are toxic. My brother ended up in hospital where his stomach was pumped empty, but no lasting harm was done.
The berries are evidently not poisonous for black cockatoos. They come in raucous droves to our tree and feast on the berries when they are hard and green. They drop so many leaves, branches and split berries it seems certain their main objective is to fill the gutters, and mulch the driveway and any cars not sheltered under the carport. They make a hell of a mess but I love seeing them there.
The other creatures that feast on the Cape lilac are less welcome. Hairy black caterpillars hatch by the thousands in spring. The caterpillars are the larvae of white cedar moths – white cedar is another name for Cape lilac. They devour the tree’s leaves, leaving skeletonised branchlets. They invade the house and pupate in dark corners. We find the brown cocoons on jackets, behind furniture, in the folds of the curtains and in shoes. The tree became so badly infested that the caterpillars’ little black poo pellets would coat the driveway and cars. It would rain on us as we stood outside farewelling friends. I wrapped hessian around the tree trunk and we removed buckets full of caterpillars when they crawled into the hessian to shelter. Eventually we gained some degree of control.
Even without the caterpillars and cockatoos the tree rains a passing parade of debris on the roof, gutters, garden and driveway through the seasons – flowers, berries, leaves, twigs.
The roots of the tree buckled the bitumen of our driveway. We put up with the bumps for a while before resurfacing the driveway.
Finally we decided that yes, getting rid of the Cape lilac would be a good idea. It had become far too big to be so close to our house. It was a harbour of nuisance. We obtained the permission and blessings of our neighbours (their houses were also periodically invaded by the white cedar moth caterpillars) and applied to the council to have it removed.
Unbeknown to us, the council came out and assessed the tree. Then denied our request. The council’s assessment reported that the tree did not appear to be causing any damage to the driveway and was not infested with white cedar moth. They said it was a healthy tree and was in no danger of falling. We thought about appealing. We could have pointed out that we had replaced the driveway and controlled the white cedar moth, and that if the tree did happen to fall in a storm it would probably take out the front of our house along with one neighbour’s. But we decided to let it be.
Years later, the tree is still there, now very much larger than it was when we applied to have it removed. The driveway is again beginning to buckle under pressure from its roots and the white cedar moth caterpillars are gearing up for a new assault on our shoes and bookshelves. But in summer I am thankful of the cool shade it throws across the front of our house. And today the wattlebirds are flitting among the blossom and cicadas are chirruping from the branches. I can hear the cockatoos a little way off. The air is heavy with floral scent and the lilac flowers are stunning against the blue sky. I can’t help but be pleased the tree still stands.
Thanks for reading,
Jill