Natural splendour, real musics, wines, wordpower
You are looking at new growth on a very old, very large tree.
The Red Tingle – Eucalyptus Jacksonii – is a survivor, just, from a much wetter time.
Its “suitable habitat” has shrunk to a tiny portion of Western Australia’s south coast; almost all of it within Walpole-Nornalup National Park, which contains the wettest part of southern Western Australia.
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Wikipedia description of the Porongurup Range’s geomorphology:
The Porongurup Range is 15 kilometres (9.3 mi) from east to west and consists of porphyritic granite[3] peaks levelled into domes. The range is the remnant of a sizeable reservoir of molten granite that bubbled up when the Antarctic continent struck Australia in the Stenian Period of the Mesoproterozoic Era, around 1200 million (1.2 billion) years ago.[9]
The sea levels of the late Cretaceous were around 100 metres higher than today[10]and during this time the Porongurup Range was an island surrounded by the sea.
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This post’s images show the appearance of the forest understory on the lower slopes of the Porongurups at the driest time of year, in an especially dry summer.
The local climate is “Mediterranean”, with cool wet winters, and warm dry summers.
Each photo’s “hero” dead leaf is wedged, approximately as high above the forest floor as would be the eyes of a tall human, standing there.
In such a forest (one dominated by tall eucalypts) it is perfectly normal to see the ground rendered largely invisible – “buried” beneath masses of leaf litter, bark, twigs & small branches.
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This post’s forest floor “natural abstract” was photographed a couple of minutes later than was the “5” Porongurup image.
Their locations were only a few footsteps distant from each other.
One of the world’s greater guitarists has (unwitttingly) provided a sublime musical accompaniment..
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A forest floor’s “natural abstracts” often delight me rather more than do some allegedly “iconic” abstract artworks on “important” galleries’ walls.
As is true of all photos in the current series’ “Porongurup” sequence, the photo is ©️ Doug Spencer, & was taken in mid-afternoon of 12 February 2025, on the northern side of Porongurup National Park.
Leave a CommentAny forest’s floor will repay your close attention, at any time.
This is true even when an unusually-prolonged dry spell has ensured that on this day the relevant forest will fail to deliver its usual visual treat in the “fungi department”.
However, in the “Karri trees’ annual exfoliation department” all was as it should be on 12 February 2025 in Porongurup National Park.
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You are looking at the “skin” on a venerable Karri’s trunk, as it was on the afternoon of 12 February 2025.
Six months earlier – or six months later – it would have looked remarkably different, in both colour and texture.
Karri shed and renew their bark in an annual cycle.
“Karri loam” – the particular soil type in which Karri trees grow – is primarily composed of decomposed Karri bark!
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This series has more birds, but not just yet; the next several episodes look at details of a forest.
These chapters are the fruit of a short walk on a wintry summer’s day.
50 kilometres northeast of Albany, the Porongurups are a “modest” mountain range – only about 15 kilometres long.
They rise no higher than 670 metres ASL, but have enough altitude – and are close enough to the Southern Ocean – to create their own microclimate.
The Porongurups are much cooler and also very much more moist than is everywhere else within sight of them.
They are remnants of what, more than one billion years ago, were much mightier mountains.
Leave a CommentHarewood Forest is definitely not “virgin”.
Until well into the 19th century it was a pristine, very tall, Karri-dominant forest
By circa 1900 no grand trees remained; all millable timber had been “mined”.
Happily, however, the forest has regrown well.
Magnificent as are southwest WA’s tall trees – all, WA-endemic – they are far from their forests’ only “WA-only”, wonderful/wondrous-strange plants.
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The featured image was taken at 1.05 pm on 20 June 2023, in the final 15 minutes of a walk in Deep Creek National Park’s old growth stringybark forest.
This particular coral fungus fruiting body (and its particular positioning, midst leaf-litter – it was another “pushy bastard”/ “remover of obstacles”… or, in its case, an uplifter of them) was especially beautiful, I thought…and still do.
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