Stockwellia quadrifida

[Ash]

Yesterday we went for a walk down to one of the Wet Tropics most interesting groups of trees, Vic Stockwell's puzzles. These trees were first located as enormous tree crowns appearing on aerial photographs of the Mt Bartle Frere region in 1971 and were tracked down by Vic and latter named Stockwellia quadrifida after him. They are some of the most massive trees in the Wet Tropical Rainforest, growing about 40 m tall and having a buttress spread of up to 20 m in the largest individual. There are only a couple of groves of them living in remote valleys. Most of them look like they have been there for a very long time with split bases and blown-out crowns. They have a lovely lumpy contorted trunk surface. There don't appear to be any young ones giving the impression they are old and moribund in the rainforest.

Ash at Stockwellia.jpg

This is a one of the medium sized trees, but one of the few you can get a good view of. Most of them are in dense forest and it is hard to photograph them. As you can see they are much larger than the surrounding rainforest trees!

Home tree cave.jpg

This one we called home tree because it had a dark cave in the middle.

Stockwellia have an interesting evolutionary history. They are descendent from the same plants as Eucalyptus of Australia and Eucalyptopsis of Papua New Guinea but live in the rainforest alongside other members of the family Myrtaceae.

Ash

[Drac0]

They look like fantastic trees, made me go google some more pics. Would love to take one home.....

Thanks Ash

[Ash]

To take one home you would need a very big backpack! They are available from Yuruga nursery on the Atherton Tablelands by request. Ash