plant

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...

This beautifully sculptural plant will undergo a number of physiological changes as it matures. The stem will develop it's characteristic bottle shape after about 5 years and the leaves will change from finely palmate to elliptical. They will drop their leaves before flowering in October - December each year once they are mature. The flowers are yellowish in colour and campanulate in shape (which is botany speak for bell shaped with petals that flare outward). Source: greenhouseco.com.au/products/queensland-bottle-tree-brach...

Kilkivan is a small town nestled in the eastern slopes of the Great Dividing Range and on the bank of Wide Bay Creek. Historically it boomed during a brief goldrush - the area is rich in minerals - but today it is a quiet rural centre, with attractive parks and interesting heritage buildings, which services the beef and cattle farmers in the surrounding district. Source: www.aussietowns.com.au/town/kilkivan-qld

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Cooles Bild.

CV-880-22-1, s/n 22-00-05/5. To Northeast Airlines (on lease from TWA) 21 January 1961 as N8478H. Returned to TWA 11 September 1963 as N804TW. WFU 24 October 1973 at Kansas City, MO and scrapped 1979.