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A few years ago, we purchased a farming property midway
between Cardwell and Tully in north Queensland, on the bank
of Dallachy Creek. John Dallachy was a botanist with the
original landing party who founded the town of Cardwell in
1864. Thenceforth Dallachy explored widely in the area behind
Rockingham Bay, and collected many new botanical specimens,
which he sent to Ferdinand Von Mueller in Melbourne, and to
botanists overseas.
It was at Dallachy Creek that I really became interested in
Lepidozamia hopei
, often going for a walk along the creek to
admire these amazing trees. In this region they seem to be
confined to an area just where the creek comes down from the
steep hills and flattens out on the coastal plain, a small,
in between area, sandy and rocky, some L. hopei
growing in the rocky bed of creeks, others on the
very edge of high, perpendicular banks of the creek proper,
in rich well drained soil. The plants growing among the rocks
probably have their roots down into permanent water.
I have found that potted plants are happy to
stand in a saucer of water, but if they are neglected and dry
out, the leaves will droop downwards, but as soon as they are
watered, up stand the leaves again.
Dallachy Creek is still a botanical paradise, with a great
variety of ferns, orchids, palms and tall rainforest trees.
Bowenia spectabilis
grows prolifically, but over a much
greater length of the creek than does
L. hopei
.
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Figure 1. L. hopei
at Cape Tribulation, N.Q.
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The annual rainfall would be seventy to eighty inches
(1780mm), but higher up in the hills, I would think the
rainfall would be much greater, Tully, fourteen miles (22 km)
away, receives one hundred and fifty inches (3810mm) per
year) as the creek comes down in sudden, big floods, but as
quickly drains away. The creek has only a small catchment,
but continues to flow right through the year; in the dry
season it flows under the sand in places.
As
L. hopei
grows in the dense rain forest along the
creek, photographing them is a problem. Another is the
crowded situation in the rain forest. Some of the
L. hopei
have been measured to over forty five feet
(13. 7 metres) tall, and ninety three inches (2.3 6 metres)
in circumference at three feet (1 metre) from the ground. The
L. hopei
canopy consists of innumerable leaves to
2.5 metres (ten feet) or more long, the glossy, dark
green falcate pinnae up to 12 inches (30 cm) long and one
inch (25 mm) broad. The curve of the pinnae gives them a
quite different appearance from a palm, with its straight
pinnae. There are trees in this colony with up to four
"heads" or branches, but they are only a small proportion of
the mature trees. I have seen more numerous branching
specimens in other colonies, possibly due to cyclone damage.
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Figure 2. L. hopei
in Daintree rainforest.
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I had earlier observed a strange thing about these tall
L. hopei
- every female tree had large calloused bumps
up the trunk - left, right, left, right to within five to six
feet (1.5- 2 metres) of the leaves, and than it occurred to
me - those were the climbing toe holes of the aborigines of
the Cardwell-Tully area who would have climbed those trees
for their seeds over many seasons of coning. (The aborigines
of the Cairns area knew the plant as "Arumba"). They could
almost have walked up those steps, cut with stone axes, many
years ago. Naturally the calluses were only up the seed cone
trees, and they would have known the time of year to climb
for the cones before they disintegrated and before the great
White-tailed Rat (Uromys caudimaculatus
) got them.
The seed cones of
L. hopei
are massive, and one cone
would have provided a good amount of food, after the usual
pounding and leaching in the stream. I have often broken open
these large seeds and thought how tempting they looked, but
of course, they are
extremely toxic in the untreated state.
The aborigines of the area would probably not have climbed
those
L. hopei
for food for the past sixty to eighty
years or even more, and the six feet (2 metres) of un-notched
trunk at the top of the tree may represent growth since there
has been no climbing for food. My guess is that these trees
could be two hundred to three hundred years old, but
scientists may have better clues. Besides the really tall
trees, there are lots of short or trunkless specimens, and
they seem very slow to make a tall trunk. However, the leaves
grow quickly, - I have measured new, emerging leaves in
potted specimens growing 5.5 inches (140mm) per day !
Figure 3. L. hopei
male cone.
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I have counted about eighty seeds in a cone, these being
mature about June each year, but very difficult to collect.
On Dallachy Creek only the very tall trees seem to produce
seed cones and the White-tailed Rat, and possibly other
animals, really relish them. They firstly eat the bright red,
fleshy outer covering of the seed, later eating into the
"nut". The few small seedling plants are usually wedged in
between rocks, having fallen from the parent tree and become
inaccessible to predators, so that of the large numbers of
seeds produced, few are able to regenerate the colony. Also,
because of competition for space in the rain forest, many of
these seedlings seem to stay at the two or three leaf stage
for years. As far as I am aware, Dallachy Creek is the
southern most point of the range of
L. hopei
, which extends north to about Bloomfield.
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Lepidozamia hopei
had a confused beginning. Rigel wrote of
Encephalartos
Section lepidozamia
in 1863. In 1865 Walter
Hill described Catakidozamia from tropical east Australia
(the specimen may have been sent him by John Dallachy). Water
Hill later wrote of Macrozamia denisoni
variety hopei
, then
Frederick Manson Bailey wrote of Macrozamia hopei
,
habitat Daintree to Johnstone Rivers, in "Flora of Queensland" 1902.
The fossil records of Victoria have produced an early
relative, found in 1947, and named Lepidozamia hopcites
from the early Tertiary period. However
Lepidozamia hopei
has been establishod by L.A.S. Johnson since 1959.
A young trunkless
L. hopei
in my garden put out
twelve new leaves in March, the leaves reaching ten foot {3
metres) long. The petioles of these leaves were three feet
{1 m} long, 130 pinnae on each leaf, the pinnae twelve inches
(30 cm) long by one inch (25mm) wide. The leaves are
produced in one big flush just once a year. One year the
whole now flush was decimated by hundreds of tiny beetles of
the Anadastus
species - a very disappointing experience.
Though this plant belongs to tropical rain forest, I
understand they are growing well in Sydney, in cultivation.
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Contributed by: |
Mrs. H.R. Bosworth (Text - from Palms & Cycads, No 38, Jan-Mar 1993).
| | Bill Snewin (Figure 1)
| | Lyle Arnold (Figure 2)
| | Mrs H. R. Bosworth (Figure 3)
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