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Old 30-09-2006, 12:32 PM posted to uk.rec.gardening
Farm1 Farm1 is offline
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First recorded activity by GardenBanter: Jul 2006
Posts: 735
Default Eucalyptus ficifolia seeds

"Sacha" wrote in message
"Farm1" please@askifyouwannaknow wrote:


Eucs are famed for their capacity to recover from fire. Very

quickly
they sprout again from the truck and later from the branches, not

all
branches but most of them. In a few short years, you'd never know
that a fire had been through, except for the blackened trunk.

Mind
you they also go up like tinder boxes in a fire - don't plant any

near
the house.


I'm glad to hear they're likely to recover because really large

areas were
blackened. And yes, we did think of how quickly and easily they

must burn.

They actually go off like bombs because of the volatile oils in the
leaves and in high winds they can cause spot fires kms ahead of the
main fire front. In 2003, 500 houses burned to the ground in Canberra
(the Capital of Aus). These were houses in the suburbs.

There were houses in the area and one had scorched earth right up to

its
front porch. They must have been frantic, poor souls. We could see

smoke
rising up in the hills from where we were staying down in Funchal

and were
told that they've had about 3 forest fires this year simply due to

intense
heat.


They are very scary things. During the 2003 fires we had burned
leaves on our lawn and we are about 70 kms from where the fires were.
They also were found about 200 kms from where the fires were.

We have started fire preps (like cleaning out gutters etc) now with
summer coming