[LINK] OT: DNTs [Was Re: The Game Begins...

[Richard Chirgwin]

Thankfully, they do still remain, but are no longer cut for timber. They 
do make a wonderful timber, but we nearly ran out.

The red cedar grows as scattered individuals in forests of other stuff. 
There is a particular moth that attacks them by focusing on the flowers. 
If there are too many flowers visible, the moths flock and wipe out the 
stand. So the evolutionary defense strategy is not to grow in strands.

But they're not wiped out complete: if you look out over a forest, at 
least in some places I've seen, the trees spotted around with white 
flowers that aren't consistent with the surrounding eucalypts - that's 
the red cedar.

Aside: my mother was a china-painter - sorry, "porcelain artist" in 
today's cant. She had a particularly good plate, and a friend of my 
father's, an old carpenter, used his last piece of Australian red cedar 
to make a table to display it.

RC

On 1/07/11 3:55 PM, Marghanita da Cruz wrote:
> Roger Clarke wrote:
>> At 15:20 +1000 1/7/11, Marghanita da Cruz wrote:
>>> ... Australian trees, with one exception, are not deciduous ...
>> Piqued my interest, that did.
> <snip>
>> But let's face it, how many of us have seen an Aust red cedar?  (:-(}
>>
> Well done roger!
>
> The story I heard, was that they were/are so distinctive in the Australian
> Bush that they could be easily targeted for their valuable timber :-(
>
> Doubt there will be many in our streets...
>> A tall, deciduous tree up to 40 m in height and 1-2 m in stem diameter. Mature trees can be 3 m in diameter. The trunk is often irregular in cross-section and older trees are often buttressed to some distance up the trunk. The bark is grey or brown, very scaly and rough, and sheds in oblong pieces.
>>
>> Red cedar is found in rainforests along the east coast of Australia. The main areas of distribution are between Ulladulla, in New South Wales, and Gympie, in Queensland. Farther north it occurs on the Eungella Range west of Mackay and the Atherton Tableland. Outside Australia it extends to Papua New Guinea and the Philippines.
>>
>> Availability of this timber is now limited.
> <http://www.dpi.qld.gov.au/26_5500.htm>
>
> M