Back to the National Arboretum

Following our very enjoyable visit last Sunday we were offered a personal tour by our friend Rob.  It was really great and I would really encourage any visitor to take one of the tours on offer!

After the heat of Sunday it was pleasant to find the day was cool.  Also cloudy, but as Rob said "There's no rain on the radar!"
 We took off to look at a few interesting areas that are not normally visited.  the first plants we really looked at was the Silk Floss Tree (Celba speciosa).  When these prickly jobs - from Argentina, Paraguay etc - get up to speed the will be 25m high  x  15m wide!
 Between the trees the main ground cover is lucerne.  This was planeted to make up for the 2001 bush fires removing the ground cover and a fair bit of the top soil. Lucerne stabilises the soil and adds nutrients.
 These trees are the Weeping Snow Gum (Eucalyptus lacrimans) from the Adaminaby area.
They - or at least one specimen - were flowering.
 Did I mention that the radar was not too close to the mark?  At least the drizzle gave me this interesting image of raindrops on a leaf!
  Metasequoia are an interesting tree in that they are a deciduous gymnosperm like Larches.   Discovered in China their identity was confirmed by fossil records from the USA!
They are growing well, but it will still be a few years before they start hitting full height.   My estimate is that their branches will mesh across to give a near complete canopy cover when fully grown.

Getting back to the basic Sequoia, Rob commenetd that it isn't often you can look down of a sequoia cone, still attached to its tree.
Round about this point we wandered through a Silver Birch forest.  These trees are not endangered or such like but had the great advantage of growing quickly so:
  1. presented the folk of Canberra with visual evidence that trees were in fact growing in the Arboretum (good for politics);
  2. and formed a protective zone around Spanish Birch trees which are endangered (good for biodiversity).
Nearby we have Wollemi Pines.  This tree is showing both male and female cones.
Work still continues.  We thought the driver of this backhoe was pushing his luck a bit with the slope he was working off.
 This shot of the internal structure of the Visitors centre reminded me a lot of the shelters in the campground at Cradle Mountain in Tasmania.  I must pay some close attention to their displays next time we go back.  Also the Bonsai/Penjing collection in an adjacent building (Frances checked this out while Rob and I went for a run.)
I shall also go back to check out the "important people's trees" planted in the Central Valley.  We noticed ones labelled for Ms Julia Gillard and Mr Jimmy Barnes (aka Barnesie).

By 12 non the car park had filled up quite well.  This was rather astonishing for a Friday outside holiday season.

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