I have a tree in my garden and i was wondering if someone could identify it for me.

It's a Eucalyptus, probably E.gunii but hard to tell. It will grow into a large tree - 30m but can be pollarded or coppiced.

Whereabouts are you? Many people had there eucalyptus badly hit by the frost last year.

Thanks for your reply. I'm from south wales. The tree is already taller than the house and i want it cut down but was wondering how much the going rate is.

I think this is a mountqain Ash, its habit is like a willow (which it also could be). They grow really fast and can get real big.

What do you mean by Mountain Ash? Usually that name refers to Rowan, Sorbus aucuparia, which has pinnate leaves, green rather than grey green, and doesn't have the greenish twigs of the plant in the picture.

Yes Kay you seem to be right. However I have a distinct recollection of a tree like this in my childhood growing rapidly from a small stick my father planted in the ground. This was from before the Eucalytus was commmon over here (1950s) The tree grew throughoutr my childhood until it was higher than the house. I thought it was willow, but my father said it was mountain ash. The leaves looked identical, but there was no perfume when you break them (like there is with eucalyptus). Maybe a smell test would verify?
TYhe leaves of this tree were weeping in habit and I remember the leaves sometimes developed a strange red eliptical bubble about the size of a baked bean, when I popped rthem opened they seemed vegetavble to me but my father said they were some form of bug. You got usually one per leaf and I dont recall them bustring open.

If it smells of eucalyptus it is a eucalyptus of course.

Confusingly, some kinds of Eucalyptus are colloquially known as "ash" in Australia, and "mountain ash" (with no further modifier) refers to Eucalyptus regnans. See Eucalyptus common name to botanical name cross-reference But it is not commonly grown in Britain. It is the largest Euc of all, and specimens logged in the 19th century may have been even taller than the tallest Californian redwoods. Even more confusingly, the Australians call several other kinds of native plant "ash" too, like the "blueberry ash" Elaeocarpus reticulatus. I guess they were very short of names to give the very diverse plants they found there. But I don't think this is E regnans, leaf wrong, rarely grown here.

I don't think, from the leaf shape, that it is E gunni (cider gum), either, though from frequency of cultivation it is always the first guess, probably more gunnii than the rest put together. I think it is more likely, among the commoner ones grown here, to be perriniana, nipophila or pauciflora. And I expose myself as a bit of a Euc duffer that I can't distinguish those by leaf alone. Given the large size and market availability, probably more likely the first. But identifying eucs is very difficult, even if you are less of a duffer than me. There is one euc I have been going past twice a day for the last 10 years, and I still don't know what it is - certainly one of the less commonly grown ones. Because on the one hand there are so many species that are so similar to one another in several details, and on the other hand individual species are so variable from specimen to specimen. Also many species have a juvenile leaf form that is quite different from the mature form. There are over a 100 species of Eucs that can be grown in this country, perhaps even twice that, so our lack of imagination in growing so many ill-placed E gunni - they look so pretty when little but soon look out of place where people choose to put them - when there are so many more appropriate trees that look much better when mature in the kind of garden locations we have available.

You will find that, unlike a leyland cypress, cutting down a Euc doesn't kill it. Rather, like a native ash, it encourages it to grow ennumerable new shoots. You may need chemicals, or persistence, to kill it.