A Meeting with the White Knights of Evercreech
IIt’s not a secret that the Eucalyptus regnans is the world’s tallest flowering tree and that Tasmania has some of Australia’s tallest old growth forests. So magnificent are these trees that significant individuals have earned appellations such as ‘Centurion’ and ‘Methuselah’. Alas, the legend of the Eucalyptus regnans have overshadowed the other giants that reside in Tasmania. There are other giants among the eucalypts that are worthy of more general recognition, and it may come as a surprise to some that the White Gum (Eucalyptus viminalis) is one of them.
Practically every plant enthusiast in Tasmania and many tourists who visit the state has seen the grand forests of the Styx or the Tarkine. Few however, even among Tasmanian botanists, have met or are even aware of the giant White Gums of Tasmania’s Northeast. This is because White Gums are often thought of as average sized trees associated with dry forest.
Yet, in the Evercreech Forest Reserve just 10 km from Fingal, a forest of gigantic white gums known as the White Knights preside over the wet forests. For centuries they have watched, like silent sentinels from their statuesque vantage point, the changing landscape of Tasmania’s Northeast. The time is nigh for the White Knights to take their rightful place in the annals of Tasmania’s rich botanical heritage, for nowhere else in the world does one encounter white colossuses such as these.
In the 1970s a forester named Des Howe was carrying out a routine survey in the forest about to be fell when he noticed that one of the trees that was to be felled was very tall. A surveyor came in and measured the tree to be an incredible 91m. Girth-wise, the White Knight is just as impressive, being 3.3 m in diameter.
It is also believed to be over 300 years old, and due to the presence of this spectacular tree, 52 hectares in the area was made a forest reserve to preserve the White Knight and other giant White Gums that reside there.
The story goes that botanists initially did not believe that the tall tree reported by the Forestry Commission was a White Gum until leaf and fruit specimens were brought before them. Likewise for me, my experience of the white gum being a average size tree of dry forest was so ingrained that I would have scarcely believed that the White Knights were White Gums until I saw the characteristic seed capsules myself.
It is not difficult to see how the first foresters who came before the presence of the giant white gums likened the trees to Knights, perhaps spotting shiny-clad armour. White has always been the colour of purity and goodness, and there is nothing quite like the sight of these massive white boles standing in blazing contrast to a deep green forest understorey. And I am properly awed and impressed, just as the visitors before me that have come to pay their obeisance to the White Knights.
By day… I am a plant scientist. By night and in every other spare moment… I am a naturalist. I pursue and study a wide range of botany related topics ranging from plant photography, nature writing on blogs, building my plant Life List and volunteering as a demonstrator on how to use the online Australian Rainforest Key. Beyond the realm of the intellect…Underlying everything I do is an awareness of the mystical side of the botanical world. I aim to enhance the appreciation of plants with SCIENCE. I aim to infuse the study of plants with HEART. I aim to integrate the appreciation and the study with SPIRIT.
