More on the mysterious green spiky thing
One of the great things about getting a big old established property is that people before us have planted trees and species we have no idea about! Here is some more information on the mysterious spiky green thing we have growing one the side of the house – I’ve taken pictures of the trunk and the leaves, as requested by the good people on the permaculture forums.
Trunk:
The tree trunk of the mysterious green spiky things
Leaves:
The leaves of the tree with the green spiky things.
More spiky things:
Do you know what these are?
here i
Learning more about trees
As part of thinking about what we might someday plant in our woodlot, I looked through a great paper produced by the NSW Dept. of Primary Industries (see this post) and I was immediately drawn to the qualities of the Sydney Blue Gum, Eucalyptus saligna. According to the chart it is relatively tolerant of frost and it likes a well-drained, sandy loam to clay loam, with moderate to good fertility. Intrigued I googled Sydney Blue Gum and came across the Australian Hardwood Network, which provides quality information on the technical specifications and applications of native hardwood timbers.
On site they have a species guide, with information about the Sydney Blue Gum. They talk about the properties of the wood in terms of density, hardness, durability (they have classes of durability), strength, joint group and timber grade. Most of which I know bugger all about, but it’s meant for the timber industry. Interestingly they also grade trees by their natural resistance to termites, which is pretty cool. ‘Some species of timber offer higher resistance to incidence of termite attack than others’. That would be something to think about, especially if you grew a lot of one type of timber.
Great site, check it out
Back to the Blue gum though, apparently they can grow over 70 metres tall. How beautiful would that be?