About trees

Australia has many special trees that all try to survive  this extreme country in their own special way. So here a few of the trees and their special habbits.

The boab

The boab is derived from the african baobab. Nobody knows how, but this family of trees is on;y found in these two continents. It is a hollow tree with very dry fruits. It taste a bit like tamarind. They survive fire and are therefore sometimes the only trees around. The on;y thing that kills them is lightning, as the often are the hightest thing in their surroundings. The tree in this picture is estimated to be 1400 years old. It has a negative story about it. In the early nineteenhundreds, many aboriginals were imprissoned. They were often transported on foot to the prison in Derby, and this was their resting space for the night. They were chained to the tree, but often it was so hot that they would try to hide inside the tree.

The eucalyptus

This is of course a well know Australian tree, as it is the only tree the koala eats. However, there are hundreds of different family members, and the koala only eats one...oh...soooo picky those koalas!

This tree is quite a clever one. It covers itself in sunscreen to protect itself from the hot sun. You can scrape it off and use it yourself :) If things get difficult for the tree, when there is for instance hardly any water, it just shuts off one part of the tree. That part will die, while the rest will survive. 

The mangroove

The mangroove is well known for it capabality to actually grow in the water. It is a fresh water tree, but it has a special machanism to grow in salt water: it filters out the salt that will be stored in a few separate leaves that soomn wiil look yellow and die. However, the rest of the eaves will get nice and fresh unsalted water :)

Capok

This is just a picture of a capok tree: you can eat the flowers (the taste is very weak, but it looks beautiful on a salad). The fruits contain Capok, like cotton. 

Fire

There are many many bushfires around this area, mostly created by man, the so called controlled bushfires. It gives new vegetation the possibiity to grow, and it prevents natural bushfires to spread too quickly and become uncontrolled. Since they introduced controlled bushfires, many new plants and animals found their way into Western Autrlalia.