TWO WEEKS INTO SUMMER, one doesn’t expect to see snow falling in thick drifts, but in the central highlands of lutruwita/Tasmania, snow, sleet and bone-chilling gales should never be ruled out. It was this inhospitable weather that greeted us when we visited the Miena cider gums, Eucalyptus gunnii divaricata, an endangered subspecies of eucalypt endemic to the Great Lakes region.
Found up to 1050m above sea level, at the exposed edges of treeless flats or in freezing hollows, the cider gum is as hardy as they come. They prefer their feet cold and damp, favouring soil that is frost-prone and reluctant to drain. When high-altitude winds come screaming over the highlands – southerlies from Antarctica, north-westerlies from the mainland’s central deserts – the trees face them down with barely a shrug. A fringe-dweller to its core, this tree resides in the kinds of trying conditions that few can suffer. Indeed, it’s in these conditions
