Indeed, eucalyptus are one of the tallest trees in the world rivaling the coast redwoods of North America.
Eucalyptus is not a single species.
In fact, its the genus, with more than seven hundred species under it.
Nearly all of them are native to Australia.
The tallest among them iseucalyptus regnans, colloquially known as mountain ash, which regularly grows above 85 meters.
It is also the tallest flowering plant in the world.
Its nicknamed Centurion, and it grows in southern Tasmania.
For comparison, the tallest coast redwood, the Hyperion, is 115.6 meters tall only 16 meters taller.
In the not-too-distant past, the Tasmanian mountain ash had reached heights greater than today’s giants.
In 1881, a surveyor, George Cornthwaite, measured a felled tree in Victoria at 114.3 meters.
That tree was about 1 meter shorter than Hyperion.
Similar claims of exceedingly tall trees have come from several other people.
The tree, which broke when it fell, might originally have stood at 128 meters.
Unverified reports of trees measuring up to 146 meters also exist.
The average lifespan of the Tasmanian mountain ash is about 400 years.
At this point they either become victims of bushfire and fungus, or they are felled by humans.
Historically, loggers have always targeted the biggest trees because they produced more wood.
As a result, the forests have been depleted of large old trees.
Today, only a small percentage of mountain ash trees alive in pre-European Tasmania are still standing.
Most lie within areas controlled by the state forestry management authorities where they are commercially harvested.
But this is about to change.
Photo credit:Doug Beckers/Flickr
Photo credit:Rexness/Flickr
Sources:Wikipedia/BBC
