Someone:
>The koalas always strike me as eucalyptus runners.
Nah, as someone else said, the gumnut babies would be the true eucalyptus runners. If you don't know what the hell we're talking about, see May Gibbs's "Snugglepot and Cuddlepie" - since having this book read to me as a child, evil Banksia pods give me the willies)
Sandy:
> Hmm. I believe that gigantic trees in Glorantha flourish
>mainly in Kralorela and Umathela, except for isolated cases like the
>Redwood. I mean _really_ gigantic trees, like Eucalyptus, Redwood,
>Sequoia. Relics of the dinosaur age.
Dave Cake:
> Eucalypts are, in general, not that big, and very common in
>Australia. You may be thinking of trees like the Karri, Marri, and Tingle
>forests of South West Western Australia, which are very big (I don't know
>how they compare to Redwoods, but I suspect they are in the same ballpark).
Sandy may be referring specifically to the Mountain Ash, a eucalypt actually unrelated to the european ash, which you may have seen in one episode of David Attenborough's fabulous "Private Life of Plants". The Mountain Ash is the tallest flowering plant in the world, and exceeded in height only by the Redwoods and Sequoias of California. The biggest on record was, if I recall correctly, about 130m tall (in the true spirit of the 1890s they measured it by cutting it down first). Unlike Redwoods and Sequoias, Mountain Ash are very skinny. Because they only have a crown of branches at the top, looking through a forest of them is like looking at countless telephone poles. They only grow in the cool forests of the state of Victoria; some of the best examples not too far from my place up on the Black Spur of the Great Dividing Range. These forests are extraordinarily beautiful, and always on my list to show furriners who stay at Chez MOB.
Like a number of species of eucalypt, Mountain Ash will only germinate after a forest fire. So, to introduce some Gloranthan content into this post, I postulate that like their trees, eucalyptus elves are saturated with highly flammable eucalyptus oil and tend to sponaneously combust around naked flames (like koalas are said to do).
Cheers
MOB
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