"Mallees" are a number of Eucalypts that send out several slender trunks from an underground lignotuber instead of from one main trunk. It's suggested this habit is a response to bushfire and challenging terrain.
This particular Mallee is a "Yate", a small group of Eucalypts from Western Australia with horned seed flower-heads/capsules that appear like sea-anenomes. The one I've got here is, I think, "bushy yate", or Eucalyptus lehmannii. A delightful small tree, I'm currently preparing the ground beneath it so that what's planted there fits it. I'll post pictures of the outcome soon.
I hope you enjoy the wild fragility of my cut specimen till then.
Hello Faisal:
ReplyDeleteWell, this tree is totally new to us!
Your cut specimen looks like an extremely dramatic headdress......now, all we need is the extremely wild party to wear it at!!
Wishing you all joy and happiness at this Eastertide!
Hello Jane and Lance:
DeleteI am glad to have found something you don't know!
I have not been blind to the potential of Eucalyptus species to lift me up off the streets into another sky. I'm not sure, in this age of relentless self-publicity, if I'd be noticed.
You lovely two, this Friday IS good, as it ever was and ever will be.
Faisal, a beautiful specimen. And I've learned something new, a eucalyptus with a "lignotuber," also a word I've never heard before. Australia is fascinating, having been separated from the other continents so long it has uniquely evolved plants (and animals). I'm amazed.
ReplyDeleteWe, or rather this continent, James, is as old as it comes. We simply don't have the recorded history that would place us in any chronology of importance. Our original people are the oldest continuous race on earth. Australia is like that, so very old, and yet every little bit - what hasn't been decimated - is amazingly young. What exists here does so because it is extraordinarily tough or extraordinarily able to contort to vastly inhospitable conditions, or extraordinarily able to demonstrate the capacity of life to dance, as it were, on the slenderest of platforms.
ReplyDeleteLignotubers are also a protea trick for surviving fire.
ReplyDeleteSorry, Diana, I missed your comment. You're perfectly right, of course, especially given our shared Gondwanan heritage.
DeleteWhat a fascinating plant. Does it have scent?
ReplyDeleteIn my experience, Michael, some of these Yates can have quite a strong eucalyptus smell, very aromatic, denser than that of normal Eucalypts, though this one - given that I don't have a strong sense of smell and must be considered an unreliable witness - does not. It might otherwise have a pollen smell, but not a perfume, as such.
Delete'wild fragility' is a wonderful description. I looked up lignotuber - it is also a characteristic of many banksias. And interesting that proteas also have them.
ReplyDeleteI guess lignotubers can be compared to bulbs, only their transformations come about not seasonally, but through unpredictable circumstance.
DeleteSorry, Faisal - I missed this post. (Any chance you could put a 'follow by e-mail' option on this page? Since I left Blogger this seems the easiest way to keep up to date with everyone). Your Mallee looks able to jump out of its pot and scurry under your bed. Watch out! D
ReplyDeleteDone.
DeleteThanks Mr F!
DeleteHi Dave. I don't know how to put a 'follow by email' option on my page - how dumb is that - but I'll look into it and do it if I can understand what to do...if, that is, I haven't been chased out of the house by a rampaging Mallee!
ReplyDeleteGee its been a very long time time since i have been to the 'little desert' to see these fine tree's!
ReplyDeleteI wouldn't mind getting out to where they grow myself, Billy! Cheers.
ReplyDeletewow!
ReplyDeleteYeah, Velma, the 'unlikeliness' of so many Aust'n. plants is what makes me love them.
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