bottletree

What looks like a bottle, stores up liquid and has an edible inner bark? The Queensland bottle tree. Shaped like a sturdy wine bottle, these trees are often left standing when undergrowth is cleared away for farming. While not a perfect source, Bottle trees have long been considered an emergency source of sustenance. Bottle trees are often left in fields where cattle are being grown. The leaves can serve as an emergency fodder. In times of extreme drought, farmers have even felled whole trees for cattle. When the outer bark is peeled back, it exposes a soft, edible inner bark. Unfortunately, the pulp is a good source of energy but doesn’t provide much in the way of protein. Some cattle fed on it have developed Nitrate poisoning. The native people who lived in Australia before the Europeans sometimes ate the roots of the young plants or scored the sides of the trees and ate the secretions from them. They used the fiber to make nets. Source: www.designertrees.com.au/queensland-bottle-tree-drink-foo...

By August 1902, heavy sheep and cattle losses were reported from Queensland. Rivers in western Queensland dried up, and the Darling River at Bourke virtually ran dry. Further south, towns near the Murray River such as Mildura, Balranald and Deniliquin—then dependent on the river for transport—suffered badly. The national wheat crop was all but lost, with close to the lowest yields of the century. Source: www.bom.gov.au/climate/drought/knowledge-centre/previous-...

Big and beautiful art of nature.