Australian Plants & Trees
Gondwanaland
This white barked tree is an Australian Eucalyptus debeuvillei’ Snow Gum’. It is planted in the special southern hemisphere enclosure at Marks Hall in Essex as part of the Arboretum. Gondwanaland was the ancient name of a super continent that split apart to form Australia, Antartica, New Zealand and South Africa (although I don’t know who was around to call it that).
In the planting there are a large number of as yet quite young Monkey Puzzle trees Araucaria araucana but that adds to the attraction of this fine garden. It is good to see new planting that will be there when the 500 year old Oaks reach their millennium. One of those plantings will be the the Wollemi Pine one of the world’s oldest and rarest plants dating back to the time of the dinosaurs. With less than 100 adult trees known to exist in the wild, the Wollemi Pine is now the focus of extensive research to safeguard its survival.It is far sighted to plant several of these trees as part of the Southern hemisphere garden which will itself develop as the trees mature and provide shelter and (globally warmed) conditions.
