hello and welcome back to curiosity mine and welcome to another episode of bush botany,
where we head out with Warwick Schofield to look at some of the more unique plants and
trees that you might find on the opal fields of lightning Ridge and also in semi-arid Outback
Australia this time we're having a look at the leopardwood which is a common but
really fascinating tree that has an interesting life cycle and some really beautiful features
we're at at here the leopard wood a beautiful tree this is one of the biggest specimens I've
ever seen it has pendulous leaves and branches small bluey-green leaves, again adapted for the
dry climate and that trunk is just to me always been a spectacular show of the coat of a leopard
the leopardwood gets its name from the bark of the tree which looks a lot like the spots
on a leopard and you know it's made of wood. the colouring like the colouring in pretty much all
tree bark is the result of lignans and tannins and other organic compounds in the bark which appear
reddish brown when they're first exposed but they age to a grey colour over time as they dry out
and they fade leopard would bark sheds in small chunks which make up the illusion of the leopard
spots it's a serious trunk hundreds of years old probably thank you they saw young leopardwoods
and they're adapted when they're even much smaller to be quite spiky and harsh and difficult for
the wallabies to eat so they've adapted that the the juveniles can get a start in life before the
browsing animals can get them their wallabies here will eat anything that's green in a dry time and
leopardwood has that lovely soft drooping leaves normally and a juvenile wouldn't have a hope if
it started that way so they start with this quite a spiky spiky harsh thing this one's grown up a
fair bit there are some smaller ones around here and the young leopard wood you'd never pick at the
trunk and everything is not a bit characteristic of leopardwood this one's getting there but it'll
lose all of this down here and just finish up with the trunk and the nice drooping almost
like the weeping myall this convergent evolution where everything finishes up copying each other
convergent evolution is when different species at different points in time or different locations
evolve similar features or capabilities or form factors or similar ways of solving life's problems
life uh finds a way sometimes similar features might evolve because different species face
the same problems or the same environmental situations or sometimes creatures or plants
might evolve similar features because there's an opportunity in the food chain that needs
to be filled my favourite examples of convergent evolution are Australian marsupials which have for
the most part evolved to take on the roles filled by ordinary mammals on other continents kangaroos
are essentially deer but with two legs and a pouch many small marsupials behave and live very
similarly to mice rats and other rodents and my favourite of course is or rather was the thylacine
which was past tense unfortunately a magnificent carnivorous marsupial that evolved to occupy the
role in the food chain of apex predator and it resembled behaved and fed largely like a wolf
convergent evolution same problems similar solutions but completely different biological
starting points and speaking of biology we need to talk about leopardwood reproduction leopardwoods
flower in late spring to early summer and they flower with these tiny pale yellowish flowers
which are really not that exciting as flowers go but after the flowers are finished doing their
thing these seed pods emerge which start off as bright green little capsules before drying out and
splitting open to reveal this spectacular purple on the inside and then they release a whole lot
of seeds with little wings on them that catch the breeze and hopefully spread as far as possible to
propagate the leopardwood species one of the really beautiful things about these seed pods
which become these super lightweight and brittle little star shapes is the sound that they make in
the breeze which is a real reminder of springtime at Lightning Ridge and it's pretty magical
yes so there it is the lovely leopard wood flindersia maculosa look at that [Music]
this episode of bush botany was made with the help of Warwick Schofield
with support from Margaret Schofield and Kay Wotherspoon if you enjoyed this video
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social media the links are all in the description and thank you for watching