"Darren Wilson" wrote in message
...
I've noticed a lot of trees and shrubs starting to die around Sydney as a
result
of the drought. Interestingly, the plants that are dying first are
natives.
Eucalypts, Lilli Pilli, Grevillea, Callistemon, Wattle are dying in their
hundreds. Bamboo is also dying off (hooray!).

Plants like Camellias, deciduous trees, bouganvillea and conifers seem to
be
handling the lack of water.

Is the same thing happening elsewhere?



Some ideas, no real answers.

I'm just guessing, but how damaged a deciduous tree is by low rainful should
partly depend on what part of their growth cycle the drought occurs in. I
know that after a hot dry summer, the Celtis street trees go dormant
earlier. If stress is going to kill a tree it often does it slowly, the
tree dies a year or 2 after the stress.

Also, it is likelly the natives were planted by people who didn't want to do
any watering, whereas the people who planted exotics are acutelly aware of
the lack of rain and have given the exotics a bit of water at times since
rainfall started to reduce, even if only once every few weeks.

Some of the plants that are dying off may be biologically constructed to die
off then reshoot from the roots in times of stress. Or they may be designed
to do a last ditch production of seed then die.... wattles might be like
this as a lot of wattles are short lived anyway.