THE TALLEST TREES IN THE WORLD!

harveystree


Welcome to my tribute page to what were once the tallest trees in the world - the mighty Mountain Ash (Eucalyptus Regnans) of Australia.
This web site features these and other giant trees of Australia.

When we think of the world's tallest trees, we automatically think of the Californian Redwood (Sequoia sempivirens), and quite rightly so, because at the moment they are the tallest trees in the world. In a small hidden valley an incredible specimen at 115.5m (379 feet)has been found.

However, less than two hundred years ago, the world's tallest trees were most likely located in Victoria, Australia. These giant trees were the Mountain Ash, which were very common and spread in vast forests across Victoria in areas what we now know as Gippsland, the Otways, the Dandenongs, Heallesville etc. Some of these places are only an hours drive from one of the largest cities in Australia (Melbourne).

How tall were these trees? Nearly double the height of any trees found in their home countries, the settlers were amazed at these gentle giants in this strange new land. Check out the photo on the left. It looks like some tall trees but this could be any stand of trees - theres no reference point - or is there? Look again! Can you see the man on a dark horse and another white horse circled next to him circled in yellow at the base of the tree. Now that's a tall tree. But still this is not the tallest tree.You can read all about this tree and others further on in this website.  Read on below..........

HISTORIC RECORDS

The best known and most famous example is the "Ferguson Tree" which was actually a fallen Mountain Ash downed by a recent bush fire. This was measured by a government surveyor, William Ferguson by tape measure on the 21st February 1872. The length was a staggering (if true) 133 metres (436 feet) with its crown (the tree's top) broken off!! The stump's DIAMETER (not circumference) five feet off the ground was 5.5m (18 feet) and at its broken top its diameter was still 1 metre. It is estimated that had this tree actually still been intact it would have approached 152m (500 feet) in height. The surveyor also noted numerous fallen trees in the same area over 106m (350feet) in height.

Big deal you may say - 150m isn't very high. Modern athletic sprinters can cover 100m in less than 10 seconds. However, to put this into perspective here are some relative  heights to make it easier to visualise;

The Sydney Opera House is 67m (220 feet) high  above sea level. (short!)

The Statue of Liberty is 93m tall.

The great pyramid of Giza in its prime was 147m (482 feet) high.

The Eiffel Tower is 300m high (984 feet). [150m (492 feet) to 2nd platform].

Now do you think these trees are really tall?

Other notable tall trees found in Victoria Australia which were much higher than the California Redwoods are as follows;

A new tallest tree has been found recently in North America and is a California Redwood and is 115.5m (379 feet) - so we have a new record holder! Its location is kept a secret to prevent damage to this spectacular specimen but it also guarded by dense forest, Black Bears and Cougars!

SO WHERE ARE THE BIG TREES NOW?

Until recently and sadly by comparison, the tallest tree known in Victoria today is an unnamed Eucalypt in the Wallaby Creek catchment which is 91.6m (300 feet) high and is healthy and approximately 300 years old. It is well protected by other trees, but it is unknown how high it will grow, as most of these trees growth occurs in the first 100 years. However recent regrowth in the Dandenongs after the Black Friday fires has many healthy young trees at 80m in height so maybe in the future we will have some contenders. A recent discovery in October 2008 has found the tallest tree in Tasmania (Asustralia) is approximately 100m (331 feet) and is called the Centurion tree. It has been accurately laser measured. It also has its top broken off and may have been significantly taller previously.

There is some controversy over the above listed amazing historical heights and whether they were really true, as current day examples while still being very tall, are still a good 10 to 20 metres shorter than the above listed heights. However the recent discovery in Tasmania is lending some tantalising credence to the 110 to120m heights.

The answer may lie on how and where these trees grow, historic events and the time it takes for these heights to be attained.

First of all it takes 150-200 years for these to grow to these heights. In good conditions Regnans can grow at a rate of 1m per year, so your going to need the trees to be untouched for at least 100 years to allow them to get to a good height. They also need huge amounts of rainfall/ specific altitude requirements and many nutrients. In this long time the trees have to survive bush fires, parasites and forest mammals, storms & strong winds, lightning strikes and the greatest threat of all - intervention by man. You'll agree, the odds are stacked against the trees.

However, when white settlers came to Victoria (Australia) more than 200 years ago, countless thousands of these huge trees were present in the vast wild impenetrable forests. The settlers cleared huge tracts of these forests for farming and settlements, and the big trees were cut down without a second thought. Many were used for building timbers, palings and even used as firewood to fire boilers used in mining. They were so numerous and the wild forest had to give way for needed pasture and civilisation. As the old photos show, it was also somewhat of a trophy to fell a big tree. Unfortunately a static object didn't provide much sport.

The trees spectacular heights however did lead to a cash prize of 20 pounds being offered in 1888 for a tree longer than 122m (400 feet). Twenty pounds was a small fortune back then and unfortunately this led to a mad rush of axe wielding fortune seekers "hunting" down trees to obtain the cash prize. This prize was only offered in the middle of winter for a very short time however and was never claimed. It is believed that many of the tallest ones were already cut down & gone

It is very hard to gauge a tree's height in the forest. Some of these trees are almost invisible in dense forest until you stumble across them. You can walk right past one and not even know its there. Indeed the recent discovery of the Centurion tree in a prevously logged area and only a short distance from the popular Tahune airwalk shows that they can literally be under your nose. It is nearly impossible to gauge  their height by visual means. A surveyor's theodolite can be used if a clear shot can be got from the ground to the trees top. In dense forest this is usually impossible. As you can see in many of the old photos below large amounts of scrub had to be hacked clear to get even a photo of the trunk! And doubtless many timbermen applied a fishermans scaling factor when telling people about the "big one" they felled.

A second method of actually climbing the tree and dropping a line/tape to the ground can be used. This however is obviously very dangerous and requires specialist gear and training. Newly developed laser measuring technology means most trees can now be accurately measured to the nearest 50cm from relative safety.

In the wild outback of 1800's Victoria however,  theodolites were only available to government surveyors and no-one was foolhardy enough to climb these big trees (except for one famous documented example which still exists), so the only way to measure them was to cut them down. Needless t osay countless still growing smaller specimens were cut to see how high they were. Numerous trees that could've been future champions were wasted. In fact many timber selectors lamented the fact that much valuable timber was simply burnt for the sake of "improving" the country side. Repeated burnings in areas by the settlers made the Mountain Ash locally extinct. Many remote forests were also searched for these big trees and they were felled indiscriminately in areas never to be earmarked for pasture only to be left to rot as they did not reach the magic 400 foot mark.

Now with most of Victoria's old growth forest gone (compared with what was present when white settlers first arrived), statitiscally speaking there is only a smaller pool of forest available for the growth of these giant trees. It may also be that the seed stock of the biggest growing varieties of  Mountain Ash are lost forever. The Thorpdale area which once boasted many giants is now farmland famous for its potatoes! Not a single Mountain Ash remains. No doubt its rich soils that now contribute to magnificent potatoes was responsible for growing magnificent trees. Huge areas of forest were cleared and the optimum growing areas and tallest varieties may now have disappeared forever. The ealry settlers weren't stupid and the most fertile, water reliable areas were cleared very early on for farms.

Nearly all the tallest Redwoods are located in a couple of National Parks. It seems some good fortune and a good deal of luck enabled their protection. They are located in the deep gullies next to streams and the wettest conditions. About 33 trees top the 110m mark. So like the Mountain Ash, not every tree reaches stupendous heights and the conditions have to be ideal for the tallest specimens to grow.

It may also have been the early settlers were mistaken about the heights of these trees. With no special tools, much measuring would've have been done by "pacing it out", leading to wild variance in actual real measurement. Add some "fisherman" stories in and you get some implausible heights.

However I find it hard to dispute however the height of the tallest trees listed above. Four of the five tallest above were measured by government surveyors who had access to accurate measuring tapes, chains and theodolites. Most of these trees were also measured when cut down or fallen on the ground. While the lengths  These were very responsible men who had to set out properties and roads to the nearest inch. Many of the original title plans created by these pioneer surveyors are still used today and are very accurate (to the nearest inch). It is interesting that Ferguson measured the tree after it had been downed by a bushfire. It possible he may have measured the length of parts of several trees he assumed were joined together. Unfortunately, we'll never know. If one assumes that Ferguson got it wrong, the records of the other surveyors, much anecdotal evidence and preponderence of historical photos suggests that the trees were much taller and bigger back then. Trees in the height range of 100-120 metres must have almost certainly been present in especially optimum growing areas. At the moment we can say with certainty that the Mountain Ash is the tallest hardwood in the world!

 
WILL THE MOUNTAIN ASH BE THE TALLEST TREE AGAIN?

Well, that's up to you.

While the Mountain Ash (or Swamp Gum in Tasmania) is certainly not endangered, the very tall/big ones are. Only if significant areas of forest are protected over a very long time (at least 150 years) can these giants have any chance of gracing our landscape again. Unfortunately this is too long a time for most people. Many of the few remaining big examples are in logging areas and while some of these are currently protected, the area around them is still being logged or cleared. This leaves some of these examples exposed and  vulnerable to strong winds or lightning strikes. Mountain Ash also needs competition from its tall neighbours to achieve these great heights. If the areas are disturbed at small time intervals ie less than 200 years (80 years is the current practice for timber harvesting) then they will never again reach these super tall heights. Fifty or sixty metres may be the new "tall". The settlers also claimed a lot of the most fertile areas for farming and other purposes. These areas combined with favourable conditions may have had the extra nutrients to push some of the trees to get that extra bit taller.  Current rainfall records show that Austrailia's rainfall is lessening. Whether this is a short trend or the new normal, the simple result is less rain which means smaller trees. Less rain also means more frequent and intense bushfires. Again this means smaller trees. It is interesting to read settlers accounts of massive amounts of rainfall in Thorpdale where the big trees were common. Big trees need lots of water and trees bring rain.

Large intense bushfires destroy large areas of Mountain Ash. While they regenerate, the big ones are lost and it takes a couple of hundred years to get them back. This wasn't a problem back before white settlement. The vast pool of forests available meant that the losses were always evened out by gains over the eons of time. The equation however today has been changed forever due to the intervention of man. With a much smaller area to work with now, man made & natural events can have bigger effects on a sytem that is currently stressed.

Since Australia has been settled less than 300 years and the lifespan of a Mountain Ash is at least 400 years no-one can speak with complete authority on them. They have only really been studied with any detail in the last 100 years. One must ask what happened before the arrival of the settlers when the forests were at their full glory. We know indigenous people occasionally hunted in the wet forests and collected plants for food and used small amounts of timber for tools etc as evident from scar trees. They also occasionally burnt the forest to flush out game and briefly clear some favourable areas. But they didn't remove the huge amounts of biomass that our current timber harvesting methods do. Maybe this extra nutirent bed is required to get the super heights of trees.

The issue is really quite complex and is a continuous festering sore between timber companies and environmental groups.

One thing is for sure, the environment is the economy and we need to get smarter and more sustainable about using our natural resources. As you can see by the photos on this website most of these trees are long gone. Lets try not to repeat the mistakes of the past...

Now, the photos.......
mueller(furmstons)treesmall
Giant trees of the Dandenong Ranges - follow this link for more images & history.
bulgatreesmall
 Giant trees of Gippsland - follow this link for more images & history.
stabletreesmall


Giant trees of the Otways - follow this link for more images & history.
styxtreesmall




Tasmanian Giants - follow this link for more images & history.