The Library Gums

When Santa Barbara drew up its plans for a new public library and the Faulkner Gallery in the 1920s, five lemon-scented gums were drawn into them. They were about eighty years old in 2012, the Santa Barbara Independent reported, which puts their planting around 1930, and that October the city made all five a landmark. The designation came in the same season as preliminary plans for the library's grounds that would have taken three of them out. Lemon-scented gum is an Australian eucalyptus, now often placed in its own genus, Corymbia, which is the name the city's landmark list uses. These five are tall and straight, with the smooth pale trunks the species is planted for, and they stand together on the library grounds, so the five count here as one stop rather than five. We have not been able to confirm that all five still stand. The most recent dated record we found of the species nearby is from late 2023, about a block to the north, so if you visit, count them and tell us. The grounds are free and open with the library, a few minutes from State Street, and on the way between the pepper tree at City Hall and the dragon tree in Alameda Park.