>Does anyone but Alex & I care about this stuff? Should we take it to
private e-mail?
If you like. I've been using the ol' "down" button quite a lot, but many people seem to be enjoying the elf thread.
>Australian eucalypt forest is so completely adapted to regular burning off
that many species (banksia for example, I think) actually require fire
to
reproduce.
The same is true of many N. American forests. Anyone remember all that controversy about allowing Yellowstone Nat'l Park to burn a few years ago?
David Cake:
>For interest, the oldest living thing is apparently a hundred
meters or so of shrub, a shrub that is sterile and reproduces by
budding,
and thus is all effectively the one individual, somewhere in Tasmania.
Its
location is a secret. Its 45, 000 years old IIRC.
Spiff! That's as nifty as the world's largest organism: a giant underground fungus that covers much of soggy, southwestern Washington (Lovely Washington state, that is - not the rodent-ridden capital city back east.) This critter is several miles long, and as far as anyone can tell, a single organism.
Just think, a visit to our famous fungus could be the a highspot on your summer tour of the Pacific Northwest, which would of course include GLORANTHA CON V in Victoria, BC, July 25-27, 1997. Added bonus: there are no poisonous snakes here!
(I was watching a garter-snake spring jamboree in the forest yesterday, and reflected that if I were in Australia, I would have been fleeing for my life...)
Looking forward to seeing you all this summer!
Pam
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