The Crows Ash
The first recorded act of gardening on this ground was a felling. In 1826 an older crows ash was cut down here to mark the spot where the Moreton Bay penal settlement would put its government garden, and the ground has been a garden ever since. The tree standing there now is not that tree, and no record suggests any descent between them. It was planted in 1884, is 21 metres tall and a metre through the trunk, and belongs to a genus named for Matthew Flinders, who charted this coast three decades before the settlement that cleared its predecessor. Crows ash is a rainforest hardwood, sold as Australian teak, and its seed capsules are the detail worth looking down for: woody, covered in short spines, and splitting open into five parts like a carved wooden flower. They end up on the grass under the tree, which stands between the formal flower garden and the river. One caution about the dating. A single record carries this tree, the National Trust of Australia's significant tree database, and we found no second source naming this individual, although the gardens are separately documented as holding native Flindersia of the same era. So 1884 is the Trust's date rather than a corroborated one, and the age here is stated on one authority.
City Botanic Gardens, between the formal flower garden and the river, eastern part of the gardens, Alice Street, Brisbane City QLD 4000You can recognise it by the woody, spiny seed capsules that split into five parts and scatter on the grass beneath it. It stands between the formal flower garden and the river in the City Botanic Gardens.
Free. City Botanic Gardens is open 24 hours, 7 days a week; the cafe and information kiosk keep their own hours.
Short walk from Central Station (about 10 minutes) or the QUT Gardens Point ferry terminal (about 5 minutes)
Sources
Where the facts on this page come from.
