Trees are determined survivors. Their trunks will grow around a lightning strike or a bush fire burn … and just keep heading up, with diminished resources.
And if they do not survive, they can become objects of sculptural beauty and home to vivid lichens.
Some trees choose not to head upwards, but outwards, unsure whether they want to be part of the river or the bank.
Planted in rows en masse in a state forest, their trunks offer changing patterns of light and shade.
I know bamboos are grasses, not trees, but you can’t call their hefty ‘stems’ other than trunks.
Clumplng bamboo like this never fails to impress me with its sheer size and solidity… and how useful a material it is!
And when it’s the yellow variety, it makes a veritable clump of golden poles.
Even tiny trunks give vertical definition to low growing plant treasures like the shy Maidenhair ferns on this bank.
While seemingly growing in rocks, this young Casuarina is already adapting to the river’s changing flows, growing south with it in floods and then recovering to head skyward.
I wish it luck.
Aren’t they just?!
Fantastic