I was down among the tall trees today looking for something to cut to get us through the last few cold nights. These are mainly stringy barks but there seems to be variations among them, even in a small group. Of course they would have been part of a forest, only small parts of which remain. I remember an old local timber cutter I got to know maybe 30 years ago telling me there aren't any pure gum trees left of the different types. He said they'd all become cross bred and it was hard to tell what some of them are now. He used to go way into the forest to cut timber props for the coal mines, this would have been probably 50 years ago. And indeed I can see variations among the stringy barks even on my few acres, but they're still obviously stringy barks. Anyway, aside from that, I can't get over how straight and tall some of them are. I lay down in the grass and just looked up at them in awe. One of these days I'm going to try measuring the height by triangulation using.my schoolboy geometry if I can remember it. No Virginia, I don't think this all happened by accident but I can't give you a better explanation.
