Wednesday, March 29, 2017

The BIG Moreton Bay Fig tree.....

On the Lawrence to Grafton Road, right HERE, is a magnificent Moreton Bay Fig.
I've been meaning to grab a photo of it for ages and took advantage of a run into Grafton earlier this week to finally get around  to it.
(Click on the photo and it will open up much larger).

The tree's roots must have been "trimmed" where they meet the road....perhaps ages ago, when the road was just a dirt track or maybe when the surface was asphalted.


The tree is so large that the canopy crosses the road....and how great it is to see that rather than cut the branches off, the powers-that-be have merely trimmed them to allow road traffic to pass underneath.

Moreton Bay figs are amazing trees - they rely on a small wasp for their regeneration, live to about 100 years and their root system above the ground forms huge buttresses.

Here is some information on the tree, botanical name Ficus macrophylla.