The stunning Australian ‘Hoop Pine’ is of the ancient coniferous family Araucariaceae, a species that has survived from the time of the dinosaurs !!!
The botanical name, ‘Araucaria’ is derived from ‘Araucanos’, a province of southern Chile where the first fossilised Araucaria was discovered. The species of the name ‘cunninghamii’, is in honour of Alan Cunningham (b. 1791 – d. 1839), a botanist and explorer.
‘Hoop Pine’ is a native Australian species found in Queensland and New South Wales. A large, slow growing tree, that can reach up to 60 m in height (that’s equivalent to a 20 storey building !!), and, some 1.8 m in diameter – they can enjoy a lifespan of up to 450 years !!! When they reach maturity, their growth rate slows to only some 23 mm per year, hence the almost indefinable growth rings in their wood. It can take over 200 years before they produce cones. Male and female cones are usually found on the same tree, and their seeds are dispersed by the wind.
‘Hoop Pines’ usually have a straight cylindrical trunk and the bark of the mature trees is generally rough and brown to black in colour. Perhaps the name ‘hoop’ came from the striations that encircle the bark of the tree trunk ???
The timber, itself, is generally whitish or light coloured – the grain is straight and the texture is fine to very fine – making it a beautiful wood for making furniture, flooring, panelling, and, in the past, match sticks and boxes. The wood weighs some 560 kg / m³ when dried at 12% moisture content.
Their branches emanate the entire height of the tree with dense, soft looking, very short, needle-like clusters of leaves.
The ‘Hoop Pine’ occurs naturally in the drier, coastal rainforest areas – from the Hastings River in New South Wales, to the northern reaches of Queensland – and as far inland as 300 km in some places. It is generally regarded as drought tolerant and a wind-firm tree, however, it is susceptible to injury from fire and frost.
Australia proudly boasts the following members of the ancient Araucariaceae family:
the tall, prickly-leaved ‘Bunya Pine‘ (A. bidwillii)
the ‘Hoop Pine’ (A. cunninghamii)
the ‘Norfolk Pine’ (A. heterophylla), native to Norfolk Island
The Araucariaceae family is of an ancient lineage. Fossil evidence indicates that it reached its maximum diversity during the Jurassic and Cretaceous periods, between 200 to 65 million years ago, with worldwide distributions at these times. At the end of the Cretaceous period, when dinosaurs became extinct, so did the Araucariaceae in the Northern Hemisphere. Until about 135 million years ago, trees of the Araucariaceae family grew in forests of the ancient southern super-continent called ‘Gondwana’, which combined the land masses of what are now known as South America, Africa, Antarctica, India, and Australia. By sixty-five million years ago, the continents had drifted into positions resembling their present-day configuration.
These magnificent trees are distinctive in their character and compliment any landscape. Having changed little during the past 180 million years or so, these living fossils are resilient and successful – that is, until large numbers of Europeans began settling in Australia some 150 years ago . . .
Sadly, as with most of Australia’s resources, the first settlers, the timber-getters, felled the ‘Hoop Pines’ at an alarming rate. The majority of the great stands of maiden ‘Hoop Pine’ were clustered in an area from the New South Wales border north to about Gladstone and west to Monto and the Bunya Mountains. In some districts, the early settlers described the intense density of the ‘Hoop Pine’ in the scrubs as “choked with pine”, or in the case of panoramas of ridges and mountains, as “black with pine”.
One such example was the ‘Isis Scrub’ that once occupied some 25,000 acres around the Childers area of Queensland:
” . . . The first industry to start in the Isis Scrub was that of timber-getting, and as mentioned previously hoop pine was in abundance and of very large dimensions. The first part of the scrub to be exploited was between Horton and Stockyard Creek . . . “
” . . . The logs in the first place were hauled to rafting grounds on the Isis River, which connected with the Burrum River, and by this mode of transport the timber eventually reached Maryborough.
Later on timber was taken from the scrub at North Isis, to the Burnett River at the nearest point, and then rafted down to sawmills in Bundaberg. Only the largest pine trees were cut, and millions of feet of pine (which would be worth fortunes to-day) were destroyed, when the scrub was fallen later for cultivation . . . “
” . . . There is none of the original scrub left, perhaps with the exception of a few odd trees, and it is a great pity that a few acres were not preserved as a botanical museum or a national park, this idea would have been an educational feature for future generations . . . “
Source: Excerpts – ‘The History of the Isis Scrub’ – by Arthur Laurie – c 1948
Today, we will never experience the impenetrable jungles of just over 150 years ago, nor will we know an enormous, 400 year old ‘Hoop Pine’ . . .
