Dean M. Chriss
Primeval Forest #2, Victoria, Australia
(Click image to enlarge)
The combination of towering trees, tree ferns, moss and dense ground level
vegetation create a prehistoric, otherworldly, and enchanting atmosphere
unlike any other that I have seen. I decided to create a series
of photographs that attempt to show the essence of these rapidly disappearing forests. This
is the second photograph in that series. The
first can be seen
at the link provided.
The predominant trees in this forest are mountain ash (eucalyptus regnans),
known variously as mountain ash, swamp gum, or stringy gum. They are a
broad-leaved, evergreen, hardwood tree that can reach heights of more than
114 meters (375 feet). Mountain ash trees are the world's tallest flowering
plant and the second tallest trees on earth, next to North America's coast
redwoods.
Since fires do not occur often in this wet rainforest environment, it is a danger that has seldom threatened trees like these.
That is no longer true. Human caused climate change is creating more severe
droughts more frequently, and today fire is a significant threat to these
tall mountain ash forests. These trees are very sensitive to fire, and
nearly all that are burnt are killed. Essential
oils that give eucalyptus trees their fragrance are highly flammable. They
also produce large quantities of flammable material in the leaf litter layer on the forest floor. This makes it easy for a fire to get started and
spread quickly. In addition the outer layer of bark on eucalyptus trees dies
each year and peels away. Countless long strands, some of which are
many meters long, hang from the tree trunks, and fall onto other
foliage and the forest floor. These quickly take fire high up into the
canopy and form burning embers that can be cast 30 kilometers (18 miles)
ahead of a fire. Fires in Australia have been measured traveling up to 72
km/h (45 mph). Eucalyptus trees have some ability to re-sprout after a fire
and their seeds often survive, but today's more
frequent and intense fires limit the ability of these forests to
regenerate.
The plants in this photograph that look like palm trees are not trees. They
are true ferns, aptly called tree ferns. They reproduce from spores rather
than seeds, and like all ferns they have a rhizome from which the fronds
emerge. A tree fern is simply a fern in which rhizome is very long and
strong enough to support itself. Their long arching fronds can reach 3
meters (9.8 feet) in length, and some of these ferns reach a height of up to
20 meters (66 feet).
Having eliminated roughly 99% of these old growth forests, logging has
historically been far more damaging to these forests than fire. Fortunately a landmark supreme court judgment in November of 2022 found that
the state-owned logging agency, VicForests, has broken the law by failing to protect
endangered species. With all of the appeals finished and failed, all logging of
Victoria's native forests will stop by the end of 2023. Since Australia's mountain
ash forests have the highest biomass carbon density of any forest on earth,
this court decision is beneficial for both our climate and the forests,
not to mention the diverse species of plants and animals that these forests protect.