Why are the gum trees dead around Cooma?

[GavinG]

Why are the gum trees dead for miles and miles between Cooma and Jindabyne? Exotics in the same area have survived the drought. It's odd.

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Also some seasonal colour, just for fun.

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Gavin

[Joel]

Perhaps flooded by Eucumbene damn?

[Sno]

G'day Gavin in the local paper the general consensus was a plague of a type of weevil added with the stress of drought .not sure if there has been any official research into it.The majority of the trees are euc vimanalis .It is quite a major event thousands of trees are dead across the monaro region(Cooma been in the middle of the monaro).The monaro doesn't have many trees anyway so to lose this many is not good .Some of these trees look old enough to predate white mans time here . Craig

[Greth]

We had a big dieoff with the drought, just noticed a really amazing old hollow gum has gone to God after 500 years. But good to see a lot of people planting and encouraging new trees around here. But the biggest landowner still grazes his paddocks hard, and gradually his land getting barer.

[GavinG]

Thanks for the feedback, Sno. It looked odd and very worrying. Has the epidemic stopped now, after a couple of good seasons? It will certainly be difficult to regenerate that amount of damage.

Are you growing anything alpine as bonsai?

Greth, the odd thing was that the destruction was fairly total for about twenty miles past Cooma, and then things just got back to normal. It seemed to be a very local event. Not just a drought regional thing.

And yes, its hard to see good country slowly going bare.

Gavin

[Roger]

Re alpines as bonsai, I've tried a few successfully:
Kunzea muelleri (lovely yellow flowers); grows up Charlottes Pass way. Bought at a nursery in Canberra 20 or so years ago.

Podocarpus lawrencei: mountain plum pine. Excellent for bonsai, though trunk thickens rather slowly. Male cones are lovely pink, and mature fruit are well named as they look like tiny plums. You need male and female plants though. An upright forest growing form is found on the Erinundra Plateau in NE Vic - nothing spectacular in the shape of the ones I've seen, but more exploration might prove useful.

Euc. niphophila: tree-line form of pauciflora/snowgum. Excellent little euc. Leaves are not typical shape, nor pendant as in most eucs, but are small and great. Have had bark peeling well, but nothing of the brilliant oranges/greens of the iconic snow gums at tree line - only the slightest hint of pale orange last year after some 20 years. Mine get well frosted and have been exposed to full sun, but maybe they need much higher levels of UV. We get UV indexes of 13-15 in summer, but don't know what the alpine near here gets.

Roger

[Dario]

Sad about the loss of all those natives in such a concentrated area
Roger I would love to see some pics of the 20 year old snow gum bonsai that you have!
This species reminds me of some memorable holidays as a youngster and I have often thought about using them for bonsai, but am yet to do so.
Cheers, Dario.

[Roger]

Dario
I can't find one! I'll see if I can get one.

[Dario]

Hi Roger, thanks for looking for a pic and sorry to hear you can't find any!
Fingers crossed that you do find some pics at some stage and I hope I get to see them.
Cheers, Dario.

[Sno]

G'day Gavin I haven't seen any of the weevils this year in my garden .I live other side of Jindabyne up the hill towards Thredbo.when the infestation was on(summer of 2009-2010)we had some around but not like the numbers between Berridale and Cooma.? Weather conditions have changed(wetter now .hurrah!) so hopefully it won't happen else where.About 10 or so years ago we had a plague of stick insects (praying mantis) in the Thredbo and Crackenback valleys.It was quite amazing to see there must of been literally millions of them.They defoliated (yes they eat leaves) huge areas of the forest.I call that time the gathering of the crows.the next year there was hardly any sign of the stick insects .The trees recovered only to get cooked in the 2003 fires,it's tough been a gum tree. My bonsai years are only just beginning so my native plants aren't very progressed .Alpine plants (subalpine ) that i have started are Euc Pauciflora,(snow gum),Euc Stellulata (black sallee)'Callistemon sieberi,Leptospermums lanigerum (Wooley tea tree)'grandifolium,Epacris paludosa,ozothamnus hookeri and Grevillea diminuta. Ask me the same question in ten years Craig

[GavinG]

Thanks Craig and Roger.

I would like to see a gum tree group planting with rocks like those in the paddocks between Cooma and Jindabyne.... And a drift of snow gums...

Gavin

[Sno]

It would be heavy

[Roger]

Gavin
Peter H has put up pics on AB.c of just the group planting you are talking about. When the search engine returns, you can find it, unless you can just go to the thread on the euc forum area.
Roger

[Jan]

Used to live in the area, these trees and those out towards Dalgety had struggled through 12 years of drought; that was enough for a lot of them.

Wouldn't be surprised about the bugs - they love plant life under stress and could well have counted for yet more trees but the thing that killed the remaining trees was that they had just reshot from dormant buds as the drought broke, only to have the new shoots frozen to death in one of the worst late frosts in memory.

It totalled everyone’s wisteria flowers, too.

Jan.