EPOW - Ecology Picture of the Week

Grass Tree (Xanthorrhoea sp.), Family Xanthorrhoeaceae
Lamington National Park, Queensland, Australia

Explanation:   Behold the grass tree of southeastern Australia.  Not really a grass, and in this growth form hardly a tree, it is nonetheless uniquely Australian, the genus Xanthorrhoea found nowhere else.  

Grass trees grow slowly.  The specimen in the photo is probably 10-15 years old.  It takes some time for the trunk to be exposed.   One source suggests that grass trees can live to 600 years old, and that aborigines used the tree's resin as a glue, the flowers for a drink, and the seed pods as knives.  The leaves also produce a hard waterproof resin used to cement stone axe heads and spear tips to their wooden handles, and the leaves and roots are eaten.  This is one versatile plant.

The native name is buggut, from the Koorie tribe which is part of the Kirrae Whurrong people of south Victoria, Australia.  

Grass tree, (Xanthorrhoea australis), photographed at Addis Point, Southern Victoria, Australia.  This is a different species than the one in the above photograph.  There are some 15 species of this genus.