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Botanical Gardens
Among the Trees: Exploring the Atherton Arboretum
Rare and unusual trees from tropical Queensland
In 1971, forestry ranger Vic Stockwell hiked into the rainforest on Mount Bartle Frere, Far North Queensland, to investigate a stand of trees that had looked intriguing in an aerial photograph. When he arrived at the site on the western flanks of the mountain, he found huge scaly-barked trees with vast buttresses. Although he could identify most of the rainforest species, this one was new to him. He collected samples and took them back to the botanists in Atherton. The tree was new to the botanists as well.
Now known scientifically as Stockwellia quadrifida and colloquially as Vic Stockwell’s Puzzle, this species is an ancient cousin of the eucalypts. Its closest relatives are in New Guinea (Eucalyptopsis) and it is thought to have originated between 30 and 40 million years ago.
The whole Stockwellia population — about 400 trees — is restricted to a thumbprint of upland rainforest. To see the trees in their natural habitat requires a slog along a sometimes steep but always muddy track on the slopes of Queensland’s tallest mountain. But there is another place to look at them.
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One of my many regrets — I won’t list them all, because none of us has that much…
