During my childhood days, i had spent a significant amount of time with my grandfather. We used to visit my aunt's home in Durgapur, very often
One day, during our journey by SBSTC (i think the name was different at that time), i was looking through the window and enjoying the strong wind that was coming from the opposite direction.
During that journey, I found, in many of the places, an artificial jungle of the Eucalyptus trees was created.
Wondering, I asked my grandfather
"Dadu, why these artificially made jungles have suddenly popped up here?"
My grandfather then explained the story behind the Eucalyptus tree and wondered why the govt of West Bengal, instead of Saal and Segun trees, are importing this nonsense for the dry soil of Manbhum.
He told me in detail, that why in many places, outside Bharat, the aboriginal peasants hate this tree because it takes so much groundwater that another plantation around this tree suffers.
And he also explained the experimentation of creating such kinds of artificial forests of Eucaliptus trees in the swampy area and the success of such experimentation.
As Google is helping me these days, instead of working as a soil engineering staff, i am presenting the write-up taken from the internet which has a detailed study of this matter from an expert point of view..
But, thanks to my grandfather, I, barely a 10-years-old kid, was enlightened by him during a bus journey
Dadu, you deserved a lot more from this #universe just because of your acumen and insights - a great personality and having so much diversified knowledge about many aspects of the contemporary world.
The sad story of Eucalyptus Tree forestation in the Manbhum Area of Bharat
Taken from the Internet - it has discussed many aspects - neither denying the fact that an Eucalyptus tree drains a lot of water nor completely pooh-poohing the idea of making an artificial jungle of this tree...
A Bad Rap: It Drains Water
Maybe it is precisely due to this universal success of the eucalyptus that so many contrary opinions have emerged regarding it. A number of theories hold that the eucalyptus is a dangerous tree, capable of generating many negative and few positive things, a damned tree. If all these theories were true, Australia, covered with vast eucalyptus forests, would be a dead continent. But, far from that, it is a sanctuary where many species, unique to that environment, have been preserved and thrive.
It is said that the eucalyptus tree absorbs water and dries up land because it needs so much water in order to grow so fast. This is a half-truth. It is true that the eucalyptus absorbs a lot of water like all plants do, but it also uses water more efficiently than other species. The acacia another rapid-growth tree needs a third more water to produce the same amount of wood. But nobody speaks ill of the acacia.
The eucalyptus is also accused of making more difficult the passage of rainwater towards the phreatic or underground level. This is true. But it is also true that any plant species, large or small, absorbs some rainwater as it makes it way down to the groundwater level. The only way to assure that all rainwater descends to the phreatic level would be to not let anything grow at all a not particularly appealing solution.
The eucalyptus consumes less rainwater than it appears to at first, because it has the ability to close up its leaves in such a way that, during droughts, its evaporation transpiration process is dramatically reduced. When it does not rain and the other trees turn yellow and parched, the eucalyptus stays green not because it has enormous reserves of water hoarded away, but because it shuts off the stomas something like the pores on human skin on its leaves, and doesn't allow the water to escape through them. In other words, the eucalyptus doesn't "sweat."
As proof of the fact that the eucalyptus uses lots of water, its enemies point to the fact that this tree is used to dry swamps. The eucalyptus certainly has a powerful root system to support its height a soaring 40 meters, on average. Its roots rarely go beyond 20 meters deep, but they have a very special characteristic. They grow turning downward, drilling through the earth like a corkscrew.
But this is not always bad. Among the many hundreds of varieties of eucalyptus, there are some whose roots are especially strong, and thus capable of eventually drilling through very hard rocks. Sometimes they can even get through that layer of impermeable rock that will not allow rainwater to pass. If they can perforate those rocks, little by little the surface water trickles towards the groundwater through fissures opened up by the roots. It will reappear in some other place, in the form of a spring or well. The eucalyptus doesn't suck swamps dry but rather unclogs their drains. For many decades now, eucalyptus trees have been planted in swampy areas and the water is still there.
Now, here from the Internet, I have got one document about the Saal tree and I am just presenting the researcher's story here - because I really can't remember what the mote points my grandfather told me about the sanity of the Saal and Segun tree plantation on the dry land of Manbhum.
Enjoy...
