Ee by gum!

All the hullabaloo concerning the hijacking of the iconic genus name Acacia for the Australian wattles by a very slick and tiny clique in Vienna* some years ago has given me (and many others round the world) much food for thought and action. Perhaps, in all fairness, we can have some reciprocity?
The most iconic of all Australian tree genera is Eucalyptus and today these gums, as they are commonly referred to, have become the major global timber production plantation trees - with many millions of square kilometres planted outside Australia. This makes gums famous worldwide and of much greater economic importance that the lowly, but very species rich, genus of Australian wattles.
Here in the south-western corner of Africa we have an endemic species in the same amily as the gums, the Myrtaceae, that has a very specialized and restricted habitat. This is Metrosideros angustifolia, sometimes called the Cape Gum, a very close relative of Eucalyptus (it could even be the ancestor of Eucalyptus and the many Metrosideros species in the antipodes. My initial research reveals that Metrosideros was named in 1788, one year before the first Eucalyptus species was described. This means that the genus name Metrosideros is one year older than Eucalyptus (just as the African Acacia species that gave our iconic genus its name, is a year or so older than the first Australian species of Acacia ever described). And because the-first-to-be-named-principle was changed by a special, well-orchestrated, Australian minority vote in Vienna, maybe we can change Metrosideros to Eucalyptus (because from a nomenclatural perspective it is the older name) AND because Metrosideros is also the ancestor of the now mighty gum, this surely further strengthens Africa’s case for the name swap?
Thus we could re-name our Metrosideros Eucalyptus, and in exchange we would give up on the acrimonious fight to keep the name Acacia-for- Africa (especially as all African acacias are about to have generic name changes and become Senegalia, Vachellia and some other new generic name that escape me right now). I am sure that we can convince the Nomenclatural Committee of the International Botanical Congress to grant us this one, TINY favour in return for our NOBLE gesture. Or should we just keep Acacia for Africa, and let the Australians keep Eucalyptus for their gums?
Eugene Moll, Cape Town (with thanks to Tony Grogan for the cartoon)

* Moll, Eugene. 2010. Acacia to relocate to Australia? Veld & Flora 96(2),
p 67 and 97(2), p 61.

Acacia to relocate to Oz?