How tall can a rainforest tree grow?
Visitors are often surprised that the trees in the Australian tropical rainforests are not taller. There are several reasons for this. It has been found that in general, the tropical rainforest in the central equatorial regions of the planet where cyclone incidence is low, are taller, whereas the rainforest on the edges of the equatorial regions where the cyclone rate is much higher, (such as northern Australia), are shorter. Unfortunately for the casual visitor, it is also likely that most of the easily accessible tropical rainforest in Australia was utilized by loggers for their timber. Apart from some particular protected individuals, such as the twin Kauri Pines at Lake Barrine (pictured), to see the larger rainforest specimens requires walking deeper into the larger protected areas. In general, the tallest trees in tropical forests are shorter than their counterparts in cooler temperate forests. In North America, much taller trees are found in the cooler north-western forests. And in Australia, the biggest flowering trees in the country (and indeed the world), are the Eucalypts in the sclerophyll forests in the south-east and south-west of the continent.
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