Pictures of a ring of six trees in our gully.
I’ve just finished reading ‘The hidden life of trees’ by Peter Wohlleben and I found it fascinating. In first year university biology, if I had learned how trees communicate with each other via fungal filaments in the soil and by emitting odours from their leaves when under attack by insect or animals, maybe my studies would have diverted from biomedical to the plant world! Only thing is, the book is written about northern hemisphere forests and trees. So now I'm bursting with curiosity about the spotted gums, turpentine, Sydney blue gums & iron barks on our block. I wish I knew more about them!
My feeble observations back up some of what I read…
I can see treees of the same species have an understanding between them, their branches lightly touch and their crowns don’t overlap. Whereas with different species, its every tree for themselves. There is a spotted gum growing right up between the branches of a turpentine next to our shack. Their branches rub in the wind. The Dharawal people from north of here believe branches rubbing together can start a fire, so far fortunately these trees just creak and squeak in the wind.
I’m on tree watch now, trying to understand these beautiful organisms that surround us. I’ve observed them through the seasons. Last winter in the thick of drought trees were struggling, wattles and some young trees died. In full summer heat there was a noiseless rain of leaves spiralling down as trees surrendered them. Then I wonder why some trees fare better in some locations. There is a steep bank on one side of our land and it’s predominantly treed with turpentine, do they prefer a slope or is the soil heavier and more to its liking? They are a more balanced tree than the spotted gums who shoot straight up and drop branches as they grow leaving a high canopy and a small number of remaining branches. Spotties are drought experts, growing even when there’s little rain. Much of our forest is populated with spotted gums. Down in the gully where our forest is most untouched - our land was logged 50 years before we bought it - some glorious old giants still stand. Down in the gully where the lyre birds scratch amongst the ferns and leeches thrive in damp places the sun barely reaches, we have found a stand of 6 trees in a circle. We call it a fairy ring, not sure if that’s due to our imagination or the boys’! Since reading Peter Wollheben’s book I’ve headed back down to take a closer look at the ring of trees, I hadn’t remembered all the details and thought maybe they were sister trees supporting and feeding each other via underground fungal networks as described in his book. But I found the ring of trees are not all the same species. Four are turpentine all knobbly and rough barked, regularly spaced branches and dark green leaves. But two are Sydney blue gum. Straight up and smooth trunked where the bark falls away. Why are these two interlopers allowed? They are all impossibly close together on a small mound in the centre of the gully. I suppose they are all clinging to the available soil and stretching to the sunlight. It feels very special standing among these six sentinels. Perhaps they are all working together? The pictures above are the tree ring.
I’ve seen proof this winter in Peter’s assertion that there’s safety in numbers for trees. A forest protects each tree from high winds. Because the State Forest adjoining our land was logged but environmental rules meant habitat trees must remain, a few old ones suffered in the July winds this year. Left standing alone without their neighbours the wind was too much for their top branches. The smell of the fallen branches brought back to me the reek of the forest when it was logged, a pungent almost oily smell. Initially I thought it was the diesel from the logging machines. But then I realised it was the trees. I don’t know if the trees were sending out a warning or pain signal with this odour as Peter writes about, or if it was just the smell of the inner trunk. I have never forgotten that smell as we visited the freshly logged State Forest. And while I’m remembering the logging can I remind my dear readers how I bemoaned this State funded process? It’s been 21 months and the unwanted logs and branches haven’t been burned or cleared up as promised - apart from right on our boundary due to my protest. The felled trees are still lying here minus their trunks, slowly being removed by opportunistic locals for firewood who punctuate our weekends with chainsaws. To me this is a shameful contribution to habitat extinction and removal of carbon storing trees.
Ahem, I digress. Back to the hidden life of trees.
The author talks about trees losing their connection when logging has occurred, saying a logged forest is like a group of badly behaved teenagers, all in it for themselves. At this point, not yet 2 years since the logging, the regrowth is all saplings and scrub, the teenagers won’t be fighting for another decade. And that’s the point about trees, they grow so slowly that most humans don’t see their lifecycle. The largest grandmother spotted gum on our track is 50m tall and must be a few hundred years old. Only Austalia’s First Nations people truly understand our forests with their oral histories going sixty thousand years back. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people only ever used fallen branches for their fires and never took more wood than they needed. They knew when bushfires would come and how and importantly when to use fire to keep the bush in balance, not in the height of summer when the gum of eucalypts is flowing and can explode to create very hot fires that animals can’t outrun. With trees as clan or individual totems Aboriginal people have huge knowledge of trees and how to look after them, rich and meaningful oral books about the hidden life of trees. I feel like a newborn compared to that knowledge bank. I will keep observing and seeking ways to better understand our forest.