Wednesday, February 27, 2013

Botany picture #41: foam


On Sunday we were caught in a heavy downpour while walking through one of the small nature parks dotting Canberra. I noticed that the rain running down the bark of a eucalyptus carried a lot of foam - this just a small detail, it was the same all around the base of the tree. Yesterday I asked a few colleagues, one of them a eucalyptus expert, and while they agreed that the phenomenon was well known and occurred regularly with many different species of the genus none of them had any idea why. Perhaps it is because of some waxy substance that is being washed out of the bark?

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