Australian Rainforest Woods: Characteristics, Uses and Identification

Introduction

Rarely do we acknowledge the ‘evolutionary significance’ of our trees. So I want to take you on an historic journey.

We start our journey not far along the broadwalk beside Lake Barrine on the Atherton Tableland in north Queensland, and stand beside the twin bull kauri trees (Agathis microstachya) which are 800 years old, 45 metres in height, and more than 6 metres in girth.

The evolutionary significance of these twin bull kauri trees – shown opposite and on the right – is that they represent 220 million years of evolutionary history for the Araucariaceae family – they are the one millionth plus generation of their species growing in this lush tropical rainforest. They have survived every catastrophe that nature and civilisation has thrown at them – so far. There is literally no other place on this planet where you can experience such a continuous record of their presence – or any other species of tree for that matter.

Of equal significance are the 600 hardwood species growing beside them – species which made their first appearance around 135 million years ago. Then there are the 400 species growing in the rainforest margins, including eucalypts which evolved 35 million years ago, and acacias which evolved 25 million years ago. This scenario is unprecedented anywhere in the world.

Australia’s tropical rainforests are a ‘cradle of biodiversity’. Their evolution rates are higher, and their extinction rates lower, than that of the temperate rainforests of the world – thus their survival is vital to our future. The Australian rainforests are the plant kingdom’s equivalent of the Rift Valley in Africa to the mammals of this world.

As significant as the Araucariaceae family are, however, they are not the most ancient of the Australian rainforest conifers. That prize goes to the Podocarpaceae family – as you will come to appreciate further on in our historical journey – representatives of which have had a continuous presence in our rainforests for over 240 million years – about the same time it has taken the spiral arm of the Milky Way galaxy, on which earth and our solar system sits, to complete one revolution.

There are a number of reasons why these species have survived. The first is because Australian rainforests have been free of glaciation for 300 million years. The second is down to a ‘quirk of nature’. The eastern rim of the Australian continent has benefited from the warmth and moisture delivered from the Pacific Ocean. This climatic benefit has been enhanced by the progressive elevation of the east coast as the Australian tectonic plate has jacked itself up on the Pacific plate. This has maintained the higher and better distributed rainfall on the east coast.

While rainforests cover only 2% of the earth’s surface they contain 50% of the wood producing species on earth. Australian rainforests therefore extend our constructs of ‘greatness’ in the natural world because they also contain the most beautiful of the Australian woods.

Rainforests are home to a staggering level of biodiversity by world standards. Australia has about 5300 native wood producing tree species, of which approximately 1200 are found in the rainforests. By comparison, the United Kingdom has 47 indigenous tree species. Western Europe, north of the Pyrenees and the Alps, contain 67 indigenous tree species. Add to this the fact that the Australian rainforests contain representatives of 12 of the world’s 19 living primitive plants, plus 65% of our ferns and 30% of our orchids, and their greatness becomes real.

Robin Lake beside the bull kauri twins at Lake Barrine on the Atherton Tableland.

Our rainforests are therefore of world significance – little wonder they now command World Heritage listing. However, very little attention is paid to them, and simply locking them up, throwing away the keys, and doing nothing to unravel our understanding of the complexity of their ecosystems is not going to ensure their future on this planet.

Believe it or not, these rainforest species once covered 60% of Australia. Today, however, they are found in isolated locations, covering only 0.12% of the continent. They are found mostly in small, isolated pockets, with some larger, interspaced locations stretching from the temperate rainforests on the west coast of Tasmania, through to the subtropical rainforests of the east coast and into the tropical rainforests of north Queensland.

Fossil remains of these ancient species date back well before the time of the dinosaurs. The fossil records for conifers in Tasmania are unmatched in the world and provide ample evidence that the current southern hemisphere species are indeed remnants of the world’s ancient plant flora, from a time when all the present continents were one.

The gymnosperms

Where did they evolve from and what were the environmental factors that led to their being present in our rainforests today?

These are vital questions to ask at the beginning of any discussion on Australian rainforests, because if you fail to understand the amazing evolutionary significance of this – now rather small group of trees – then you really are going to fail to understand the ‘fabric’ of the Australian rainforests – how the whole system is ‘knit together’, you could say. Or in weaving terms, the gymnosperms are the continuous ‘warp’ threads which are laid down first, and across which the ‘weft’ is woven to complete the ‘fabric’. The weft being the angiosperms which evolved from the gymnosperms.

In botanical terms they are members of the plant subdivision Gymnospermae, and most people would more commonly refer to them as conifers, which simply means that they produce cones to carry the seeds which will produce the next generation – however, some do not produce cones.

They were essentially the first wood producing trees.

The Australian gymnosperms are of world significance but unfortunately they have not been given the respect that they so rightly deserve. For example, the members in the family Podocarpaceae are the oldest conifers in the world – older by 50 million years compared to the remaining conifer families – and are the most ancient of the wood producing plants. Podocarps are also found in Africa, South America, New Zealand, and extend north into China and Japan. However, of the 20 conifer families that have existed, 12 are now extinct. Of the eight that remain, Australia has three conifer families with species growing in its rainforests. Two of these families, Podocarpaceae and Araucariaceae, are the oldest of the eight remaining conifer families in the world. This is highly significant and places them at the very top of the evolutionary scale for wood producing trees.

The Podocarps first appeared 240 million years ago, followed by the Araucarias 220 million years ago. The next oldest family, the northern hemisphere conifer family Taxaceae, first appeared 175 million years ago.

The third Australian conifer family, Cupressaceae, first appeared around 160 million years ago and is considered by many as a ‘link’ species between the gymnosperms and angiosperms.

During this period Australia was part of the larger Gondwana continent and these species have had continuous presence for between one and two million generations – wow! How many grandparents can you trace back on your family tree?

I don’t mean to be disrespectful, but this leaves the dinosaurs, the birds and the bees and all those other ancient things for dead. Where have our evolutionary biologists been all these years that they are still scratching their heads wondering what we should do with these ‘flamin’ trees. Can you imagine the spectacle that would be created were we to bring a dinosaur back to life – take your pick, any dinosaurs – through DNA recombination, or some such technology?

But, the reality is that we do have magnificent, superb, interesting and devastatingly ancient trees growing in our Australian rainforests. The oldest living things on this planet – and we hardly give them a tinker’s curse!

Another amazing thing is that despite the world having gone through numerous ice ages since these species first appeared, many are still present and relatively unchanged in their characteristics.

The Australian conifers have seen the dinosaurs come and go – and in my estimation are still of great significance to the continuation of life on this planet.

The species covered in this discussion

The trees and woods described include 13 gymnosperm species:

There are other species which have not been described – mainly because they are not as significant as the above, and because the wood characteristics of these species have not been well studied. They include:

The oldest of the rainforest species

The ancient conifers have survived in a continuous line, the oldest being from the Podocarpaceae family, which have grown continuously for more than 240 million years. Australia has six genera and 16 species of podocarps, the most significant include brown pine (Podocarpus elatus), black pine (Sundacarpus amara) and Huon pine (Largarostrobos franklinii).

Those from the Araucariaceae family have survived in rainforests for 220 million years. Australia has three genera, the most significant include kauri pine (Agathis robusta), bull kauri (Agathis microstachya), hoop pine (Araucaria cunninghamii), bunya pine (Aruacaria bidwillii), and the recently discovered Wollemi pine (Wollemia nobilis).

Still others are from the Cupressaceae family with four genera in Australia, the most significant include King Billy pine (Athrotaxis selaginoides), pencil pine (Athrotaxis cupressoides), and brush cypress (Callitris macleayana) have survived for 160 million years – the latter considered a link species between Araucaria and Callitris in the Cupressaceae.

When you enter a tropical rainforest you enter the ‘engine room’ of 240 million years of plant biodiversity in a complex ecological system. The rainforest still contains some of the original species in relatively unchanged form, plus around 1200 timber producing descendants. This evolution occurred not only in the rainforest, but in the margins, where the changing conditions spawned an additional 3000–4000 more descendants which now cover most of Australia. This evolution is continuing today.

The era of cone-bearing plants

The period of the Mesozoic, from 245–65 million years ago, is regarded as the age of the conifers, or cone-bearing plants.

Three of the four southern conifer families, including the Podocarpaceae, Araucariaceae and Cupressacecae, have a long history, and continue to be a significant part of our rainforest today. They had their beginning around the start of the Mesozoic period, 240 million years.

Two hundred and forty million years is a pretty difficult time shift to get your mind around. This era began in catastrophe when an estimated 96% of all marine life and 70% of life on land ‘bit the dust’. This is an important marker for our rainforests, because according to fossil records, it was shortly after this event that members of the Podocarpaceae – the conifers – first appeared. As you can imagine, many members of this family have not survived, but we still have species from that time in our rainforests. These include species as listed earlier.

Then, according to Professor Robert Hill, around 220 million year ago the family Araucariaceae evolved. This family has the most extensive fossil record, occurring in both hemispheres – and Araucaria in particular has an ancient origin. In the southern hemisphere Araucaria and Agathis have substantial macrofossil records, especially in Australia. Then as their concentration in the wet forests diminished, this left them vulnerable to changes in climate – particularly around 100 million years ago in the Cretaceous period when fossils of King Billy pine (Athrotaxis selaginoides) first appeared. More losses have occurred in recent times following the separation of Australia from Antarctica.

Around 160 million years ago species in the family Cupressaceae evolved. The most notable being brush cypress (Callitris macleayana), Oyster Bay pine (Callitris rhomboidea) and South Esk pine (Callitris oblonga), which are considered transition species.

Detailed information such as this is only possible today because of the evidence of recent fossil data, as well as technological advances in analysis which have revealed an enormous range of physiological tolerances in the southern conifers, fossils of which are present virtually on every surface of the southern land masses currently occupied by woody vegetation.

There is evidence that the conifers grew in the extremes of drought and during times of high and low temperatures. They extend from Antarctica to the Equator, from poor quartz soils to nutrient-rich volcanic earths.

Not only have they persisted to this day, but individual species, for example the bunya pine (Araucaria bidwillii), which now only grow in Queensland, have fossil evidence in both hemispheres, some of which show beautifully preserved pre-mineralised female cone fossils from 200–155 million years ago in the Jurassic era, with cone structure similar to that found in the bunya pine today.

According to a world authority on conifers, Aljos Farjon, DNA analyses indicates that the southern conifer families split from the northern conifers and have remained distinct.

Changing environmental factors

The role of oxygen

Two and a half billion years ago the earth’s atmosphere contained only approximately 1.6% oxygen, and the earth without oxygen looked much like Mars.

Oxygen is life, not just for us, but for animals and plants. So how does it all work? All organic bodies are built on strings of carbon – the chief source of carbon being from the carbon dioxide in the air. All life on earth originates from the ability of plants to capture sunlight, and in the presence of chlorophyll, photosynthesise the carbon dioxide from the air and water from the soil, and make it into simple chain sugars, which all living things use for food – oxygen is their waste product.

This process started when Cyanobacteria appeared around 2.7–2.4 billion years ago. They were the first to release oxygen into the earth’s atmosphere as a product of photosynthesis. Some earlier life forms produced oxygen, but Cyanobacteria were the first major species to synthesise their own sugars for growth – the by-product being oxygen. They had chlorophyll in their cells, the same green pigment used by plants today.

Plants pirated the machinery for photosynthesis from Cyanobacteria, forming chloroplasts around 1 billion years ago. Then around 800–700 million years ago algae and lichens lifted the oxygen levels from 1.6% (10% of today’s levels) and the greening of the planet took off – and with it the rapid evolution of new species.

Oxygen also forms ozone in the upper atmosphere which shields both plants and animals from most of the sun’s destructive rays – an astronaut in space will die without elaborate protection.

So, by around 600 million years ago, the air was primed for complex animal and plant life – and that’s when the first simple forms of plant fossils begin to appear.

The role of climate

There are many examples where dramatic changes in climate have acted as the precursor for the myriad of tree species that have evolved in the Australia rainforests and their margins.

For example, around 55 million years ago the earth experienced a carbon spike when high levels of carbon dioxide were released into the earth’s atmosphere. This stimulated plant growth and mutation rates. Most of the carbon dioxide was quickly dissolved in the ocean and dispersed through deeper waters forming calciferous deposits on the ocean floor. After such spikes, an equilibrium was eventually reached where about 85% of the carbon dioxide was locked in the ocean and 15% in the atmosphere.

Similarly when South America and Australia parted from Antarctica around 35 million years ago, climate cycles again changed dramatically. This happened because the heat generated in the Pacific basin began to circulate around the Southern Ocean, therefore distributing the heat more widely around the globe – including into the northern hemisphere via the Gulf Stream. Australia subsequently cooled and dried, but the northern hemisphere continued having regular ice ages.

With the continents now in place, as we skip forward to review the last 2 million years, scientists have documented 19 cycles in our climate, with colder periods and lower sea levels lasting about 100 000 years, interspersed with warmer spells of about 10 000 years between. At the end of each warm period the earth has experienced a carbon dioxide spike in the atmosphere. How long has the current warm period been going? Strangely enough, approximately 10 000 years, because it was around 10 000 years ago, for example, that Seattle, on the west coast of the USA, was covered by 1000 metres of ice, and sea levels were 50 metres lower than today. At various times between 10 000 and 100 000 years ago sea levels have been 100 metres or more lower than it is today. During the last interglacial period around 130 000 years ago, temperatures were 1°C warmer than today and sea levels were 5 metres higher. So it’s interesting to remember that we are presently in one of the relatively warm, but brief, interglacial periods which experience relatively high sea levels.

If you extend these natural cycles into the future, and acknowledge that we are coming close to the end of a 10 000 year warm cycle, it is probable that we are most likely heading into an ice age – and because of our adverse effect on the environmental cycles, we may simply be intensifying the severity of these natural cycles, not necessarily the direct cause of them.

In reality the term ‘climate change’ is a tortology – climate is not a constant. It is and has been subjected to short- and long-term variability – quite frequently to extremes that have had dramatic effects on the biodiversity of this planet. We need to come to terms with this and learn to adapt and modify our influence by not returning buried carbon back into the atmosphere – carbon originally taken out of ‘harms way’ by plants and which will serve only to intensify this variability.

The role of land bridges

In recent times land bridges have formed between Australia, Papua New Guinea and Asia – on current sea levels, a drop of 10 metres will expose a 50 km land bridge between Australia and Papua New Guinea. A 50 metre drop opens a 500 km land bridge, including the exposure of the Gulf of Carpentaria – this has happened in the last 10 000 years.

During the last 100 000 years, its almost certain that sea level has been 100 metres lower than it is today – which opens the potential for migration of plants, animals and humans between the Asian and Australian tectonic plates.

The land bridge to Asia, however, has been less frequent because of the deep and more permanent sea channels off the Asian coast. Aboriginals arrived during this period – around 50 000 years ago – however recent artifacts indicate their arrival may extend back 60 000–65 000 years.

With the collision of the Australian and Asian plates about four million years ago – and this is fairly recent history – the central ranges of New Guinea were formed as we know them today. Migration of species, however, was probably not as great as it could have been because the periods of land bridge formation coincided with dry periods. Plant migration was also limited because the rainforests on Cape York Peninsula have clearly defined edges – the result of dry season burning in the surrounding areas – and stepping inside the forest, the temperature drops noticeably. Their small size also emphasises the fact that the rainforests in the north do not contain many of the species found only a short distance away in New Guinea. If anything, it would have been the migratory birds which spread species across the gaps. The fossil records show that many animals also crossed these land bridges as they followed their preferred environments. Once introduced, plant species either adapted or disappeared. There is however a common thread to their disappearance – those at greatest risk were those with the narrowest geographical range – and if you look at the Australian rainforests species, many have the narrowest range of almost any plant system currently in Australia. It’s therefore imperative that we give them every opportunity to survive.

The role of fire

As the continent dried, seasonal variation in rainfall meant that much of Australia could no longer support rainforests. The Northern Territory is a good example, where despite high rainfall, the dry spring period does not support rainforest which needs a consistent seasonal rainfall pattern.

This gradual drying increases the risk of large volumes of dry biomass which encourages fire and so the eventual demise of the rainforest. In early times fires were ignited by lightning strikes.

Large uncontrollable fires in Australia’s eucalypt forests are a frightening phenomenon – but they are important to some species. For example, natural stands of mountain ash (Eucalyptus regnans) comprise same age individuals which germinate only following catastrophic fire events. Natural stands therefore are dependant on catastrophic fire events for their very existence.

However, fire was used by the Aboriginals as a tool, and today has a continuing ‘presence’ in the country’s landscape.

It is not known which plant communities covered most of Australia before human arrival. It is an important factor, however, that as the rainforest retreats, the nutrients – which are predominantly in the plants themselves, both above and below the surface – are quickly removed through leaching and erosion.

What is not readily appreciated is that rainforest which has been destroyed by severe disturbances, such as cyclones, can regenerate very quickly. However, where a fire occurs within a year or two of that recovery – destruction is almost complete. It’s feasible, therefore, that Aboriginals, using fire as a tool, could also quite quickly have removed large areas of Australian’s rainforests during their 50 000 year habitation. It appears likely that most of Australia was regularly burnt by Aboriginal people as a strategy to ensure maximum food production.

Around 40 years ago William Jackson proposed that fire frequency dictates the type of vegetation. Frequent fires create grassland, intermediate frequency fires support eucalypt forests, while infrequent fires produce a more dense dry rainforest. There are many reasons why eucalypts rely on fire. However, in the absence of regular fires – say one every 50–100 years – dry rainforest species fill the understorey and out-compete eucalypts for water. On the other hand, over-burning can be just as damaging as low frequency fire. A major factor is that different forest types in different climates respond differently to different fire regimes – it’s a complex issue.

It is however becoming more evident that fire frequency has swung too far both ways, so that currently over-burning, as well as under-burning, is responsible for the loss of more than 2.5 million ha of eucalypt forest each year in Australia – and that is of serious concern. The balance has to be restored, and more study and a better understanding of the role fires play in forest management are seriously needed. It is also necessary to separate the human emotional response to catastrophic fire events from the scientific evidence when making decisions on forest dwellings.

The angiosperms

Botanically angiosperms are members of the plant subdivision Angiospermae. They are flowering plants and are commonly referred to as hardwoods – but this does not mean that all hardwoods are hard. They produce our major high-quality timbers.

In evolutionary terms they are direct genetic descendants of the gymnosperms and first appeared around 135 million years ago – quite some time before Australia split from Gondwana. Just as the gymnosperms received their boost during a warm wet interval, around the end on the Permian period and early Triassic, 245 to 205 million years ago, the dawn of the angiosperms occurred in the Cretaceous period, which covers the period between 145 to 65 million years ago.

It is thought that the first angiosperms evolved around the Rift Valley in Africa – which was still part of Gondwana at the time. From where they spread north, south, east and west and because of the ‘unbroken Gondwana landmass’ they spread to all the southern continents, including India, parts of South East Asia, South America and Australia – thus many early family linkages exist across these continents.

Variability as a natural phenomenon

As the Gondwana landmass separated, distinct modern families evolved from common Gondwana ancestors. The variable climatic conditions of the Cretaceous period being vital in the evolution of the Australian vegetation.

With the progressive splitting of the Gondwana landmass, as the smaller segments moved to their present locations, the ancient conifer forests were placed under stress. There were fluctuating periods where the sea levels rose and flooded the forests, then as they retreated they left new land to be colonised by new adaptations, and therefore new species. These changing environmental pressures, mostly created by climate change, and sea-level shifts, were the essential ingredients for plant change. As new niches opened the flowering plants survived compared with cone pollinated conifers. However, in the rainforests they grew together in a continuous evolutionary relationship – which continues today.

After Australia split from Antarctica, the Australian angiosperms evolved rapidly. Their presence in such large numbers – when compared with the northern hemisphere – is an indication that as environmental pressures modified the environment, the ability of individuals more suited to the new niche environments were able to flourish – Darwin’s process of natural selection in evolution.

Around 35 million years ago, and shortly after the break with Antarctica, the first Eucalypt species evolved in the rainforest margins. This was followed by the first Acacia species around 25 million years ago.

Bring that evolutionary process forward to today, and we now have over 900 Eucalyptus species and 1200 Acacia species. Eucalypts and Acacias are continuing to evolve, as are other angiosperm families. They are endemic to Australia.

It is important to realise, however, that not all individuals will be modified, and this is an important aspect to appreciate. The trees growing in a relatively constant rainforest environment will be replaced by trees with similar characteristics – characteristics favourable to that environment. Therefore, successive generations in relatively constant environments will tend to remain unchanged.

The nature of variability is not difficult to comprehend however, if you consider the enormous seed production of trees. In order to maintain the status quo, it only needs one seedling to replace an adult tree. However, each tree will produce millions of seeds in its lifetime, and with the natural variability that exists within the process of pollination and seed production, where pollen will be delivered by pollinating insects and birds, possibly from kilometres away, a percentage of those seeds will vary because of the natural variability in the population, therefore introducing new characteristics. In normal times, the seeds most suited to the environment will grow and replace the parent. However, if the climate dries, for example, or fire is introduced into the equation, then only the seeds, seedlings or mature trees that can survive fire will survive – and thrive if those conditions persist.

This is how variability creates biodiversity and diversity creates sustainability. Given a glaciation-free environment for the past 300 million years, this is why Australia’s rainforests now have the world’s largest concentration of angiosperms.

The unique Australian hardwoods

Around the time that the angiosperms evolved Gondwana was still in one piece and with a more favourable environment than was being experienced in the northern hemisphere.

Fossils from Antarctica show a rapid rise in angiosperm species from around 120 million years on, and in Australia the oldest angiosperm fossil evidence is in the 110 million year old Maryborough coal seams. The oceans began flooding Australia 141 million years ago, with a maximum coverage of around 60% around 117 million years ago. The sea had made a complete withdrawal, from what we regard as the Australian continent, by around 99 million years ago, and then again after Australia split from Antarctica. So it’s evident that the angiosperms took advantage of the newly exposed sediments each time the waters receded. The evolution of the Gondwana angiosperms is more dramatic than in the northern hemisphere, with Europe having fewer than 100 angiosperms, compared with 5000 plus Australian angiosperms.

A second factor in Australia’s preponderance of species is that the continent has not experienced a major ice age for 300 million years. The exception being in small subalpine areas