Skip to content →

Tag: trees

Grand sands (#12 in series: paradoxical sands)

 

By their very nature, sandy soils are “poor” – low in nutrients and unable to retain much moisture.

Yet in some places where rain often falls and the sun often shines – including some of Amazonia and parts of the world’s largest sand island – rainforest flourishes.

That island is Australian.  (Queensland’s Fraser Island/K’gari)

So too is this post’s sandy, “desert” location, which is circa 900 kilometres distant from any ocean’s shore.

Even an ignoramus would never mistake the Simpson Desert for rainforest, but s/he would almost certainly be hugely surprised to discover just how beautifully vegetated is so much of it. (as are a great many other sandy, “arid” Australian places)

Leave a Comment

Winter light, Flinders Ranges, 05/06/2023 (final in series: the “Cazneaux Tree”)

 

 

Venerable and majestic as it is, the pictured river red gum is neither the tallest, nor most massive, nor oldest example of the Australian mainland’s most widely distributed and most widely-loved eucalypt species.

The pictured tree, however was “the hero” in the most famous photograph ever taken of Eucalyptus camaldulensis.

87 years ago one of the most influential Australian photographers saw this tree, standing on a sparsely vegetated plateau, with Wilpena Pound’s flanks behind it.

The tree has stood there for at least several centuries; “the Pound” is circa 800 million years older.

Harold Cazneaux (aka “H.P. Cazneaux”) captioned his 1937 tree portrait, The Spirit of Endurance.

Comments closed

Winter light, Flinders Ranges, 05/06/2023 (#6 in series: the “floor”)

 

 

Conifers and eucalypts both tend to be domineering – they are particularly adept at excluding other kinds of trees.

In the Flinders Ranges, however, one sometimes sees “pines” and “gum trees” thriving, surprisingly near to each other.

Comments closed

Winter light, Flinders Ranges, 05/06/2023 (#5 in series: river red gum’s “skin”)

 

 

 

At 8.56 am we were just beginning to walk away from Wilpena Creek, and uphill, towards the “lip” of the actual Wilpena Pound.

As is true of many Eucalyptus species, river red gums are forever-engaged in a cycle of growing and shedding their bark and leaves.

Comments closed

Winter Light, Flinders Ranges, 05/06/2023 (#4 in series: fully-qualified survivor)

 

 

Clearly evident: this tree is no youngster, it has not merely seen fire and rain, and is still alive, probably some centuries on from the relevant seed’s germination.

Commonly known as the river red gum, Eucalyptus camaldulensis is the most widely-distributed of any eucalyptus species; it is almost-proverbially hardy/“enduring”.

River red gums are the “gum tree” best-beloved by Australian members of Homo sapiens.

In 21st century Australia, this “iconic” species is in big trouble.

Comments closed

MacDonnell Ranges (#4 in single-image series: “ghost” who photosynthesises)

Above,  you are looking at an uncommonly old, very large example of an “iconic” Australian tree: Corymbia aparrerinja, commonly known as ghost gum.

This particular tree, near Trephina Gorge, circa one hour east of Alice Springs, is billed as the largest living ghost gum.

Close by, is a smaller but more elegant ghost gum; the “powdered” hand in #3 of this series was my beloved’s, immediately after she had gently rubbed that tree’s trunk.

For many thousands of years, Central Australia’s first humans have been putting ghost gum bark’s white powder to ceremonial use…

Comments closed

Stringybark forest (#1 in “Deep Creek” single-image teaser series)

 

 

Deep Creek Conservation Park is circa 110 kilometres south of Adelaide – 90 minutes driving time, almost all of it on good roads.

One of South Australia’s better kept “secrets” includes SA’s best remaining (tiny) remnant of a once relatively common but now very rare type of forest, spectacular coastline, lovely bushland, wildflowers, many birds, and lots of ‘roos,

And that’s not all…

Comments closed