Today's image by Ken Beath, aka kjbeath@Flickr, concludes the second series on Australian plants (original image | BPotD Flickr Group Pool). Thank you again, Ken! If you haven't visited Ken's photo galleries, they are a good place to explore Australia online.
The aptly-named firewheel tree is a native of eastern Australia, along the coast from New South Wales into Queensland (it also occurs in Papua–New Guinea). Sinuatus, as you might guess, is related to sinuous, and therefore means “wavy”. This epithet is in reference to one of the two shapes of leaf found on this plant, illustrated in the New South Wales Flora entry for the species (the link also has more photographs).
The Association of Societies for Growing Australian Plant's article on Stenocarpus sinuatus notes that the centre of diversity for Stenocarpus is not in Australia, but rather New Caledonia, approximately 1200km (750 miles) east of Australia. There are, more or less, 30 species in the genus and the majority of these are endemic to the islands of New Caledonia, bolstering the importance of New Caledonia as an archipelago with one of the highest rates on endemism in the world; of the ca. 3250 species found in New Caledonia, 76.4% of these gymnosperms and angiosperms are found nowhere else. This information is sourced from rates of endemism, part of a larger paper by Porter Lowry II of Missouri Botanical Garden: “Diversity, endemism, and extinction in the flora and vegetation of New Caledonia” (an excellent read, by the way, with many accompanying photographs).
Stenocarpus sinuatus in cultivation is discussed in “Wheels on Fire!”.
WOW!
Ahhh...Nature. Isn't is wonderful?
It's so wonderful to see the diversity of plant life on this planet. Thanks, Daniel. This one is really spectacular!!!!!
Stenocarpus sinuatus - Z10 - RHS Index of Garden Plants, Griffiths
Stenocarpus sinuatus - minumum 7-10 degrees C/45-50 degrees F; tolerates brief periods to 0 degrees C/32 degrees F. - A-Z Encyclopedia of Garden Plants, Brickell, Cole, Zuk
I'm having a problem with older entries. When I click back to last year's entry, it's okay. But the previous year's entry (2005)at that site is listed as the same as the entry I'm looking at. When did BPotD start?
Colleen, visit the right-hand sidebar on the main Botany Photo of the Day page, and then use the monthly archives to go back to April 2005.
This photo is just simply gorgeous. I would love to have it as a wallpaper on my computer. How do you do that?
Colleen,
the "one year ago..." link changes every day - on ALL pages - to take you to the page for one year previous to the actual, current date, not the date of the page you're looking at.
Daniel,
This is something that confused me when you first implanted ;-) the "one year ago..." links. I'm not sure it wouldn't be better to set it up as Colleen thought it actually worked, so that each day's entry is linked to the same-day entry from one year prior.
Leslie, the best way to get wallpaper is to go to the image on Flickr at http://www.flickr.com/photos/kjbeath/420962108/ Above the image should be an All Sizes button, click and then select Large, either download or I think (I'm not on windows here) right click, should show a menu that includes setting as wallpaper.
I had a seed-grown Stenocarpus growing in my two-story unheated greenhouse in Victoria B.C. for about 25 years. It never flowered, but the shiny leaves were handsome.
A few more interesting Stenocarpus here: (apologies if it's not ok for me to post this link.)
http://www.ukoasis.co.uk/viewtopic.php?t=4164
I agree that the one year ago link isn't very clear. I'll consider how to improve it.
daniel mosquin ,this tree is amazing, thanks ive worked in the tree busness for 30 years