2020 Far North Queensland
 

Cairns - Tue 21/07/2020

2020 Far North Queensland
The next morning, we leave our hotel a bit after 7:30 and head for the Cairns Botanical Gardens. Like everything else in this city, the gardens are lush and green. We park easily and walk to the entrance. The growth on this tree is fascinating. They are tropical epiphytic ferns that make the tree look like it is growing hair. There is also a tree covered in epiphytes likes this on the Cairns Esplanade. Epiphytic ferns grow naturally in a totally soilless condition and grow without using the water and nutrient storage of soil. The plants obtain water and nutrients only during rain. Look closely and you can see the roots of the tree have completely consumed the wall. It reminds me of the temples in Cambodia or Indiana Jones movies.
On the eastern side, to our left, is a remnant of a tropical rain forest. On the way in I spot this plant. It is some sort of cycad and they are not closely related to palms, ferns, trees or any other modern group of plants. "Modern cycads are the survivors of an evolutionary journey spanning at least 260 million years. They reached their peak in both numbers and species during the Jurassic Period when they were an important food source for herbivorous dinosaurs and other animals of the period." The entrance is quite modern. The information centre is on the left.
We haven't yet had breakfast so while Jenni orders, I go back to the car to get our umbrellas as it has started to rain. The gardens are divided into two sections: a smaller formal gardens at the top and the endemic rain forest at the bottom. IMG 0887 Our journey begins at the Gondwanan Evolution Garden.
The path takes us through plants that have evolved over the eons. We start with first life from 3,500 Bya Naturally enough, there are no examples of bacteria from 3,500 Bya in the gardens. The story begins a mere 386 Mya when all the continents were joined into a single land mass called Pangea. The garden's story begins when Gondwana separates from Pangea and follows the eventual breakup of the land masses of Gondwana into their present day positions. We need to keep in mind that the plants in this garden are only decades old (if that) and are the current version of evolution's progress. From that point of view these gardens are pretty ordinary.
This story board places the origin of the cycad that we saw at the entrance as during the Jurassic. There are many trees in the Gondwana gardens but unfortunately none are labelled. This is a typical display; nice but not all that exciting. What does excite me though is any time I see a kauri - exciting because they are nearly all gone here and in NZ.
What a beautiful tree is the Kauri Pine. It's a genuine pine with cones. "The Queensland kauri was heavily logged in the past, and spectacular trees of prodigious size are much rarer than in pre-European times; despite this, the species as a whole is not endangered." IMG 0909 These are Seychelles Stilt Palms from (duh!) the Seychelles. The stilt root system is thought to have evolved to stabilise the palm on sleep slopes.
IMG 0911 "Watch your step. The Flecker Gardens are listed as a State Heritage Place on the Queensland Heritage Register." "Flecker Gardens has evolved over time. It is important that Characteristics such as paths and infrastructure associated with collections of earlier times be retained for future generations." "The heritage listed paths were constructed from the 1960's from recycled materials."
"Please enjoy this journey through a bygone era and traverse with care." We enter the new conservatory in the Flecker Gardens. It was was officially opened on 4 September 2015 and showcases many of the Cairns Botanic Gardens' most spectacular plant species. These are pitcher plants which are carnivorous plants that have modified leaves known as pitfall traps - prey trapping mechanisms with deep cavities filled with digestive liquid. The plants attract and drown their prey with nectar. "Australia's tropical native orchids are a diverse and fascinating group of plants, comprising more than 200 species. They occur in a variety of habitats including rainforests, savannahs, paperbark swamps, rocky outcrops and mangroves. Most local species are epiphytes or lithophytes (growing on trees or rocks); relatively few in the ground."
Moth Orchid. Moth orchids Doritaenopsis. We exit the conservatory and continue outside. This beautiful plant is an Aechmea weilbachii AKA Blue Tango. It is an Annual/Perennial from the Bromeliads family.
I am amazed how the battle for survival rages on in the tropics. Here some sort of vine is slowly killing its host. Does the vine die when the host dies? How did the vine get here anyway? Jenni stands before a huge Samanea saman. It is a species of flowering tree in the pea family native to Central and South America. Common names include saman, rain tree and monkeypod. It can reach a height of 15–25 m (49–82 ft) and a diameter of 30 m (98 ft). There is a section devoted how Australian native peoples used plants for a variety of needs. Taking a trip like this is a bit of a wake-up call for Caucasians like me. I was completely unaware of the myriad uses to which native peoples put the tropical forests. Then our lot came along and destroyed, in one or two generations, nearly everything these people depended on.
These are Sausage Trees, botanical name Kigelia africana. The genus consists of only one species, Kigelia africana, which occurs throughout tropical Africa. The sausage tree grows a fruit that is up to 60 cm (2 feet) long, weighs about 7 kg (15 pounds), and resembles a sausage in a casing. We cross the road and enter the Fitzalan Gardens named after Mr Eugene Fitzalan, the first caretaker (1886-1897) of the Botanic Gardens. The area comprises three separate gardens connected by paths and footbridges, and houses a small water lily pond, giant mature palms and trees planted many years ago.
Nice thought but . . . We enter the boardwalk. I take quite a long movie of our walk through the forest. "Feather Palm swamp forests were once a conspicuous feature of coastal lowlands of Queensland's wet tropics bioregion. However, agriculture, urban clearing and wetland drainage have reduced these endangered communities with the remaining remnants usually in small patches. Feather Palm swamp forests occur in lowland flood plains on waterlogged alluvial soils where the water table is very high, in a high rainfall zone."
Feather Palms. At the end of the boardwalk, we cross a saltwater stream. Mangroves live in the tidal waters. On our return to the car, we pass through the final exhibit: giant stands of bamboo.
Bamboos are the world's largest and tallest grasses. We leave the gardens and travel south on the PCW and stop at The Boulders 2029-07-13FNQld-13  
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