Is this a River Red Gum? - help please!

not the sunset pic...
go into Klaus' website & click on "photos"...

Hi Ed and Klaus,
Sorry for that, I have just visited your web site and the said picture is definitely a River Red Gum. People that have not seen one of these majestic trees are not true Australians. The only important thing to remember is to never camp under the tree canopy, as they have a very bad habit on dropping very large limbs and many a camper has been seriously injured and even died from the falling limbs.
Tell the person or people that said that they are not River Red Gums to go and have a good for themselves.

You take unreal photos Klaus and you should be very proud of your shots.

Seasons Greetings

Stephen

i can help with that................Image Could Not Be Found

Many thanks for reply Mobi. (That person's email came from America...).
I shot the pic of the tree at a beautiful waterhole near Nyngan/NSW.
Happy Christmas to you - Klaus and Rusty
www.oz-greetings.com.au

Eucalyptus camaldulensis

Almost certainly Eucalyptus camaldulensis - common name is river red gum which is probably the most widely distributed gum tree in Oz. Occurring as it does in all states except Tasmania, and from the tropics to southern SA and Victoria, but mostly west of the great dividing range, it has a lot of local variation, hence different varieties. One such variety comes from Lake Albecutya in western Victoria, and despite what they look like there, the seedlings can grow very tall very quickly - for this reason that variety (and some others) are grown around the world (India, S Africa, Brazil etc) in plantations for pulp.

Closely related to to forest red gum which grows in forests to the east of the great dividing range.

One of our most beautiful, majestic gums.

Cheers,

Val.

Good one...

;-)))

Mate....
...
..
Pure poetry.
Onya eh.
jh.

Strewth Flywest,
You covered a lot of ground in that one; nearly as good as the tongue-twister preceeding your post. (Which has my unconditional endorsement.)

Mate, something I've pondered for decades. We mongrel humans LOVE to tag things with a name (at least I do: shouldn't speak for others.)
eg, so we're on a trip down past OOnagalabbye, and we spot a tree with an old blaze. The Wise One in the group tells us that it marksthe spot where Soloman imparted infinite knowledge to George the Goose, and we proceed happily in the comfort of our new-found enlightenment.

All happy. ..Who cares?

On a practical note, we should all care, two examples, if I may.

First, we have a quiet, serene setting beside a river of liquid mud, perfect lawn to the water's edge, and majestic gums, all with squawking squabs at the broken-branch entry to their nestsite.
Too good, eh. So we camp beneath the lovely tree.

Second, we have that recent kafuffle when "Mexican Evil Grass "was granted entry because of possible scientific inaccuracy.

In the first case, precise ID is of no consequence. Trees with beautiful nesting sites have those bloody big holes for a reason, yes? Name is immaterial. So camp where you will.

Second case highlights a recently released ornamental grass. It came into Australia as a benign ornamental. It seems that the mongrel has the ability to further degrade our rangelands, and was incorrectly identified. ( By Quarantine?? Mates, could I tell a fib on that one, tru.)

So at times, accurate ID is critical. Most times, (especially to geese like meself), any name is enough.
So a big gnarled old eucalypt, alive (or increasingly dead, in recent times), could happily fall into the classification of 'River Red Gum'.
I reckon one such species is E. camaldulensis. [close eh!!]
To each their own, and may all of your camps be serene.
Jeff. H

Jeff,

people do like to get hung up on name tags for things and the scientific community make it a game of ring a ring a rosie, scientific nomencalture (naming) debates go back n forth wth all manner of scientific reasons (arguments) why this should be that genus or species or sub species.

One would think - well it can't really be that hard - but I can tell you it CAN be harder than you think.

In all honesty there's a tendency for some in the scientific community to think that "immportantality" (a morbid cross between immortality and self importance) awaits them if they can present an argument that something old is made new again and hence then named after them.

Speciation isn't THAT difficult, in some cases.

Basically to be the same species - the animals need to be able to meet in the wild - mate and produce fertile offspring.

Sounds easy enough...at first glance.

So..a Red Deer From Scotland - isn't the same species as a Canadian elk.

For a start they are two different continents - so they can't meet in the wild to reproduce....hence they are different species.

Heres the rub tho - when you release them both into the Wilds of New Zealnds mountains together they interbreed and produce fertile offspring - the hybrids being called locally Wapiti - the maori name for them.

But we are happy they are different species - because it is easy - they can't meet in the wild - because they come from 2 different continents, so they remain separate species.

That's all well n good.

What if they were birds, tho - and had wings and could fly between the 2 continents - then technically they WOULD be the same species, because the separation of landmass by ocean is no barrier to birds that fly (or worse, fishes that swim).

So because those two deers are mammals and can't swim - even tho they are similar enough to be able to produce fertile offspring we conclude they are different species, yet were they birds we'd have a bet the other way and call them the same species...

Now if they were fish - then the oceans are contiguous (without boundary) around the world so now there are no barriers, and we find the Japanese Red Snapper, the American Porgie, and the Australian pink snapper, instead of being 3 separate species as was thought for 100+ years - are now in fact all "Pagrus auratus"....pink snapper.

Speciation isn't always as simpe as we think - and this need to hang lables on everything can get very wearying when you get right down to it, in the insect and plant worlds etc

Trees is tough enough - wait till you try birds then fishes & insects!

Red gum works for me - & I could live with that description.......who among us from the photo can identify the flowers nuts and seeds down to species level from a scenery photo - all I can say is the claimiant has better eyesight then me Gungadin.

Cheers

Hi Fly West
Appreciate your contribution about River Red Gums, as a Kiwi that visits a lot I now can differentiate between a Coolibah and a Gum, just to be safe I don't camp under a big tree anyway.
I have books here on NZ Flora, as you say, botanists all appear to try to get there name in somewhere, some shrubs, lower ground cover plants seem to change names frequently.
Can you direct me to a book that will help me Identify Australian native, trees shrubs herbs grasses etc... don't need anything to technical, just something I can pick up on my travels and tell myself, Oh maybe that is what it is.
Talking of technical Wapiti is not Maori it is the North American native name for Elk, Elk type animals once roamed across most of the Northern Hemisphere and are still in the Scandinavian country's. as well.
Yes they do cross in NZ with Red deer from Britain, but I have never seen or heard of a Red deer cross with a White Tail,( we always called them Virginia deer, I guess that where they come from) for that matter haven't heard of Sika, Samba cross with the Red either.
You mention birds Have a good book on Oz birds, that I refer to quite often.
In my lifetime i am amazed by the number of Australian Birds that arrive here,Magpies, (they do appear slightly different to the Oz birds bigger and with more Black on the back) just a pest give our native birds hell, shoot, trap them all the time, Spur Wing Plover very common here now, Welcome Swallows, and they are welcome, Rooks/ Crows have arrived recently, Local Bodies are trying to eradicate them before they become established.
I was out at the bit of a farm we still have, sitting admiring the view when a strange bird came flying past, I think it was a Sulphur Crested Cockatoo, another Aussie import, at least it will be better than the Possum an they came by sail. We had just experienced a long period of strong/ gale westerlies so it could have been possible. 20 or so years ago was hunting on Stewart Islqnd and came across the remains of a bird, it had a band on the leg so posted the band, got a reply, it was a Little Egret and was banded in Victoria less than a year previous. Catle Egrets and Little Egrets are becoming more common all the time, as are Royal Spoonbills, waiting for Pelicans to arrive?
Cheers
Russ

Have a crack at this link.

http://www.forestrytools.com.au/Books.htm

You'll need a selection from the list to have much chance of identifyng the trees and plants in all of Australia - it tends to be broken up into zones with books for each zone...

It would get costly very quickly - maybe the answer is to have wireless internet connecton with you in a laptop and google search the invidiual species your interested in when you spot them......might prove cheaper than all the books you'd need to carry to do this well.

That would be my siggestion - and bye the way good call on the Wapiti name, I was thinking of it in purely kiwi terms, and ignored the cree indian and british columbia connections with the name Wapiti.

Interesting how two animals can evolve down family and species trees in tow different continents and yet still be so closely related that they can still produce fertile offspring when introduced in a farming environment.

Theres a LOt of work that HASN'T been done in this respect, the cat family is but one good example...

We do know of infertile crosses like Ligers (lions & tigers) but very little about the Panther, Jaguar, Cougar possibilities......and what the results would prove in the fertility stakes.

One f the "possible" explanations for large Black wild cats in the outback of Oz - is the old circusescape theory dating back to the late 50's early 60's here in WA - when it was claimed that Cougarand panthers escaped in a circus accident in our southwest.

Whether they survived and interbred to produce fertile offspring no one has been able to prove and as a result we have a few well known books now like Savage Shadow about the Cordering Cougar and another about the Parryville panther and so on.

Having seen personaly such a large black cat when working as a Wildlife Officer with CALM back in the 80's (along with a few colleages who likewise reported their existence) I can vouch for the fact we have SOMETHING large black and cat like in our southwest forests, but what exactly it is, remains open to conjecture until some good dna work is eventualy done.

The whole species thing becomes less clear the more you look into it and fish & insects are the worst .

I know from my entomology work in the southwest we have sub species of freshwater aquatic insects unknown or descrobed by science that are already becomming extinct ue to salination from changed land use, yet our govts want to pumps the last remaining freshwater from the southwest to feed the industrial and urban needs of ever growing Perth.

Honestly - the way & ever increasing rate - that man is destroying this planet - we won;t need to bother classifying everything to sub species level - because minkind itself will be lucky to be round long enough to fiinnish the job & we are the only ones to whom the subject is of any interest.

In short we are our own worst enemys - and on a planetary level would best be described as a virulent visrus that must be destroyed. On a planetary scale we are like a bad infestation of white ants (termites) in a house built of radiata pine.

And it isn't "global warming" thats our biggest threat!

Our destrucion of fresh water & habitat that produces it will most likely be our decline if we don't run out of clean fresh air to breath first.

Cheers

Thanks to all for replies and detailed wisdoms. It seems to be a complicated tree.
A Happy Christmas - Klaus and Rusty
www.oz-greetings.com.au

Thanks get outmore - after these enlightenments I shall happily stick to what, by luck, I had.
Happy Christmas - Klaus and Rusty
www.oz-greetings.com.au