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Dinosaur food
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| [Note Guidelines] Photographer's Note |
On the southern coast of New South Wales there are many national parks and forest reserves that can be easily visited. One of my favourites is Murramarang National Park which is about 280km south of Sydney and is around 22,000 ha in size. It protects a variety of habitats including wild rocky shorelines, beautiful sandy beaches, coastal lagoons, eucalypt forests and rainforest.
One of the dominant forest types is Spotted Gum forest, which often has a understorey of cycads. Spotted Gum (Eucalyptus maculata) is widely distributed through coastal eastern Australia, often on poorer soils. In areas of rich soil it can grow to 40m, often reaching 30m before branching. Their beautiful smooth leopard-skin trunks provide an endless variety of spotted forms as they continually loose different areas of bark through the year.
In poorer soils the understorey is dominated by the ancient cycad, the Burrawang Palm (Macrozamia communis). These bizarre-looking plants have been around for over 200 million years and were apparently dominant world vegetation type before the end of the Cretaceous period around 65 million years before present. Indigenous peoples used the Burrawang extensively before Europeans settled the country in the 1800s. The bright red seeds are rich in starch and were collected as a staple food source by the aboriginals. The seeds needed to be sliced and soaked to remove harmful toxins. Prior to World War 2, the underground stems were commercially exploited for making laundry starch.
This shot was taken at North Head, Batemans Bay. Here the Spotted Gums are dwarfed by the coastal wind shear and only reach around 8 metres height. They become twisted and provide some crazy shapes. Nevertheless, you can see from this shot that the forests are fairly dense and open, with Burrawangs dominating the understorey. Still haven’t found any dinosaurs grazing on them yet though. |
Lagrifajo, red45, sAner, PDP, Luc has marked this note useful
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