Nice way to start the day

[SteveNT]

Here's a couple of pics from my drive from Ngukurr to Darwin on Thursday.

Left Ngukurr pre dawn, the water was steaming at the Wilton crossing (too dark for a photo)

The sun was just coming up at the Roper Bar crossing so I parked half way across the causeway and took this one.

Further up the track I reached an area of sandstone pillars where I was going to do some herping but there had been a very hot fire and it was scorched earth. I'll have another go next Thursday, these places regenerate with amazing speed and the animals move back quickly.

Dont the cycads love a fire though? These are cycas armstrongii and one a few meters tall is centuries old.

There you go, 700km later I was home!
This is one job where I love the commuting!

 

[Smithers]

Nice pics, I love Cycads my fave Is cycas thouarsii A bit more softer leaves than revoluta and more like a Macrozamia

 

[Chris]

Nice photos Steve, the Top End is the place in Oz I reckon, I love it.

 

[SteveNT]

Nice pics, I love Cycads my fave Is cycas thouarsii A bit more softer leaves than revoluta and more like a Macrozamia

You'd love these then, cycas calcicola (blue cycad) growing on a limestone outcrop near Katherine.

Look at the one in pic 2, hundreds of years old and at some stage had it's head ripped almost off, (by a cyclone or a hell flood) but still going strong. Unfortunately these guys are under serious threat from Gamba grass, a giant African grass, deliberately introduced as stock feed. It burns so ferociously even our fire loving savanah species die after a few hot burns and you end up with nothing but Gamba grass. And no multi millions of zebra, gnu, etc to eat it. It's a horror. 10 years ago I was rattling the alarm bell but the beaurocrats did nothing. Last year, when it had spread so far there is no hope of eradication, they declared it a noxious weed. Such is life.

 

[Smithers]

Awesome lookers esp the one you pointed out amazing how these and Xanthorrhoea's thrive on the odd fire now and then. I remember going along the coast road from Cairns to Port Douglas and seeing heaps and heaps of cycads. Lovem.

We really have a poor track record for introduced plants and animals don't we.

 

[SteveNT]

Yep.

The cycads up here burn every year. They are completely adapted to the cool trickle fires you get from the native spear grass. But not gamba fires.

In the late 70's I saw a farmer bulldozing some big old grass trees in SA. I went and had a chat and he carefully lifted one for me and dropped it into the back of my ute. I planted it in my backyard and it never died but it never grew either.

I was unlucky enough to be involved in the '83 Ash Wednesday fires but afterwards, driving through endless miles of blackened country I saw the Xanthorrhoeas were just bursting into life. I went home, stacked some timber around the grass tree and torched it. In minutes it pumped out masses of red sap (which I now understand to be a fire retardant) and over the next two weeks it produced a huge head of new leaves and a 2 meter flower spike. And stayed healthy from then on.

Only good thing that came out of those hell fires for me.

 

[Smithers]

Sorry to hear of your plight that was a horrid time so much loss human and animal good your still with us. I also had a grass tree that did nothing I tried the same deal maybe not enough flame perhaps as it died soon afterwards. I asked at the local nursery why and the guy told me there's a bacteria or something in the soil where these grow. Not sure how true that was but I never purchased another grasstree, probably cause I couldn't afford to loose another one. Not cheap at all. I just remembered I have some red seeds from a macrozamia communis from down the south coast. I heard these can take 24 months to germinate I guess these plants do everything slowly Each time I see a grasstree or cycad of reasonable size over a meter I think wow that's soo old

 

[SteveNT]

There are symbiotic fungi (and presumably bacteria) but the species vary big time too. The Cape York variety is hollow. The SA ones make brilliant table tops as slices because they are solid.

I found a shelved gorge wall covered in tiny, naturally bonsaid Xanthorrhoeas. each sitting in a pocket of sand. They faced east. Stunning.

I've never been back to that spot but I hope they are still healthy and there.

Retirement project #14