My baby is all grown up

Walking out to the mailbox I took a small detour to have a closer look at a tree growing beside the creek.Attachment 462764

Its a Silver Quandong and it's only about 36 years old and I know that because I planted it. Its pushing 30 metres in height and is about 700 mm at 2 m from the ground and that buttressed root system covers an area of about 5 metres in all directions. If this tree continues its current growth rate it will be close to a metre in diameter at 50 years. Now there may be another native species that can match that but I have never seen anything like it, obviously it likes where it's growing. At the other end of the spectrum is a Black Bean that was planted at the same time which is about 15 metres away and is still only about 6 metres tall and 100mm dia, I couldn't find it at first because I was looking for something at least slightly bigger, if I wait another two hundred years or so, I may get some nice timber out of that. The third tree planted was a Red Ceder and it's about 350 mm so sort of in the middle.
I planted these trees with the idea of harvesting them for timber but that is just not going to happen so I may stick a plaque in front of it and leave it as monument to my existence.

Holy crap - are you sure you didn't plant a magic bean??

That's a monster :2tsup:

Good, don't be like that douchebag from the Giving Tree

Gday yoboseyo, your post had me stumped, pun intended, but with the help of Google I now "get it". Must have missed that one when the kids were young. My wife reckons I'm the tree and everyone I know is the boy and maybe she has a point but I like being me. Having said that, if I'm around in two hundred years that Black Bean is going to become a nice dining setting.

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Originally Posted by THE BARON

if I'm around in two hundred years that Black Bean is going to become a nice dining setting.

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and the boy did...

... and the tree was happy

BBN is normally a better grower than that but it's fussy about site... it likes deep rich soils, good drainage, and plenty of moisture. ... wet pockets, gullies and creek flats basically.

That SQD is a log, or close enough to it to saw. Big quandongs get doughy inside, I've seen some monsters but best timber seems to come from logs around 900 dbh. By rights quandong should be the backbone of a plantation industry... Quick growing, good form, and its a native with fruits that support a whole range of animals. Harvest it, and plant another... That's the whole point isn't it?

Gday John, I seem to have all the right conditions for Black Bean to grow but I think I may be holding my mouth wrong when I plant them. Attachment 462933

That stick in the photo is a specimen that I planted at least twenty years ago and that is a small creek right behind it. It had a 1 inch square stake placed beside it when planted and it took at least ten years before it was bigger than the stake. As for milling the Quandong nah I really don't need that much white wood and as it is near the head of that little creek I figure when it floods the seeds will be distributed all along its length, nature needs all the help it can get. There is also the issue of the Council declaring anything looking remotely like a tree protected in this area with fines of up to 100,000 dollars for damaging vegetation. I figure I already owe around 4 million dollars since that came in so at a hundred grand a shot I choose my targets carefully.

Baron, your Black Bean is behaving just like several others I've known, though maybe a bit more extreme. My neighbor planted one that sulked like yours, for about 20 years, then suddenly decided it was ok to grow into a tree, & proceeded to make good headway after that. I planted two at the bottom of my yard about 7 or 8 years ago(edit, I just checked & it was more than 10 years ago - time flies!), and one is maybe a metre high, the other barely half that. The site is a creek flat which was cleared a couple of generations ago, with a very free loamy soil, but it has had little other vegetation besides grass for maybe 90-100 years. A friend of mine planted one in his backyard and it grew into a sizeable tree which produced copious flowers & became a Lorikeet meeting house within 8 years or so.

I suspect the self-bonsai-ing habit is due to low soil fertility and/or a failure to establish the right soil microbes in its root zone. This species likes rich soil, and while your creek bank may look pretty lush, it's likely low in nitrogen & phosphorous in particular. Mine are in a spot where I seldom see them, so neglect is what they get most of, but the couple of times I've remembered to feed them a bit of fertiliser, they responded with a good flush of healthy new leaves & a burst of growth, but then neglect and the ongoing dry summers we've had these last 5 or 6 years soon have them lapsing back to struggling to keep their heads above the grass...

Cheers,

I planted a Black Bean in y back yard 20 years ago and it's now ~250mm dia, flowering and dropping crap loads of seeds, sing out if anyone wants some. I figure with 8" of sapwood I doubt it would be worth dropping in whats left of my lifetime

I’ve planted a few trees here in the ‘burbs of Sydney since 1986.
The best has been the Red Cedar.
Silky Oaks self seed and grow like weeds.
I was given a Blackbean in a pot from a terrace house it was rootbound but I planted it where we had removed a huge Olianda a few years earlier and grew well in the clay, even grew over a piece of nylon rope that I’d left draped over a branch.
A pinkwood and a claret ash both didn’t last long,too far north I guess.
The North Queensland ebony is very slow but seems happy enough.
H.