More underground trees
I missed the flowers on these Elephant's Root (Elephantorrhiza elephantina) trees because I only found them after their flowering season. You might wonder why I am calling these trees but these flimsy little shoots are geoxylic suffrutices or trees that evolved to live underground in savannah grasslands that are prone to regular fires. The large seed pods in the picture show that these are actually trees, not just a dense patch of little herbs.
This patch is probably from a single tree, with a massive network of underground stems and they evolved to survive fire a couple of million years ago. While some of the trees that grow here remain small and developed corky bark as fire protection, the Dwarf Mobola plums and Sand Apples grow underground instead. There are a couple of other underground tree species native to my area, I will keep an eye out for them.
If you'd like to read more about underground trees, here's a BBC-Earth article
Original trees. Very similar to our little pines. I happened to see how the forest areas were restored after logging. There it was planted here such small seedlings of pines.
These do not get any bigger than they are now. The tree remains underground
Very interesting!
Beautiful photos!
Really interesting, the leaf looks like our black wattle.
Nature is amazing how it can take care of itself
That it is!
Wow, these are really fascinating. I will look up the link you shared for more information, they are such interesting trees.
Fascinating. I didn’t ever think of underground trees, so thanks for the intro. :)
These are very smart trees hiding underground from fire and heat! I guess these trees will survive the end of the world event too!!
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