The Voices of Australia"s Forest Ghosts
Australia is yet too young a country to have many historical ghosts, except maybe those of bushrangers.
She has had no Loch Ness monster, the nearest being a mythical animal called the "bunyip," created to solve the mystery of an unusual track found in an area of country shunned by domestic animals.
Nevertheless Australia has her own "haunted woodlands," where thousands of tiny voices whistle, whine and whisper, although there may not be a human being within miles.
They are the voices of Australia's forest-ghosts.
The "ghost" has proved to be a botanists' delight, Eucalyptus perriniana, a tree better known as the "Spinning-top" or "Round-leaf Snow Gum.
" This dwarf gum-tree with its strange leaves, some discs, some linear, and its smooth, blotched, white bark, is something of a freak even among Australia's 365 varieties of strange eucalypts.
It is not widely known, even among Australians, because it grows only in certain mountainous areas of southern Australia, and is really quite insignificant among some of its big brothers of the mountains.
A large Eucalyptus perriniana would be only fifteen to twenty feet in height compared with the 300-odd feet of some of its neighbors.
Its trunk, of course, is too small and pale to attract commercial attention.
Bushland ghost-voices are caused by the wind blowing on the unique, juvenile leaves.
These leaves, circular in shape, grow opposite each other in pairs, but fuse to form a complete disc.
They are a plant curiosity because, instead of growing out of the stem, they grow around it.
A stem may have an indefinite number of paired leaves, and looks for all the world like a skewer run through a handful of uncooked potato chips.
When the juvenile leaves die and dry, they become loose and develop a curl, which catches the wind.
In the lightest breeze they spin around the stem, making an eerie whine not unlike an aboriginal "bullroarer," or, when they rub against leaves still firmly attached, they create a modulated whistling noise.
The mature leaves, a secondary and more permanent leaf-growth, are, like those of any other eucalypti long, thin and tapering, and this botanical peculiarity has given rise to other tales.
The most popular is that the spinning-gum quickly turns to an ordinary blue gum if taken away from its natural "haunted" habitat.
Many, however, have been transplanted to Hobart, Australia's southernmost capital, and this story has been shown to be false under observation.
She has had no Loch Ness monster, the nearest being a mythical animal called the "bunyip," created to solve the mystery of an unusual track found in an area of country shunned by domestic animals.
Nevertheless Australia has her own "haunted woodlands," where thousands of tiny voices whistle, whine and whisper, although there may not be a human being within miles.
They are the voices of Australia's forest-ghosts.
The "ghost" has proved to be a botanists' delight, Eucalyptus perriniana, a tree better known as the "Spinning-top" or "Round-leaf Snow Gum.
" This dwarf gum-tree with its strange leaves, some discs, some linear, and its smooth, blotched, white bark, is something of a freak even among Australia's 365 varieties of strange eucalypts.
It is not widely known, even among Australians, because it grows only in certain mountainous areas of southern Australia, and is really quite insignificant among some of its big brothers of the mountains.
A large Eucalyptus perriniana would be only fifteen to twenty feet in height compared with the 300-odd feet of some of its neighbors.
Its trunk, of course, is too small and pale to attract commercial attention.
Bushland ghost-voices are caused by the wind blowing on the unique, juvenile leaves.
These leaves, circular in shape, grow opposite each other in pairs, but fuse to form a complete disc.
They are a plant curiosity because, instead of growing out of the stem, they grow around it.
A stem may have an indefinite number of paired leaves, and looks for all the world like a skewer run through a handful of uncooked potato chips.
When the juvenile leaves die and dry, they become loose and develop a curl, which catches the wind.
In the lightest breeze they spin around the stem, making an eerie whine not unlike an aboriginal "bullroarer," or, when they rub against leaves still firmly attached, they create a modulated whistling noise.
The mature leaves, a secondary and more permanent leaf-growth, are, like those of any other eucalypti long, thin and tapering, and this botanical peculiarity has given rise to other tales.
The most popular is that the spinning-gum quickly turns to an ordinary blue gum if taken away from its natural "haunted" habitat.
Many, however, have been transplanted to Hobart, Australia's southernmost capital, and this story has been shown to be false under observation.
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