The Structure of a New South Wales Subtropical Rain Forest

Abstract

Descriptions of rain forest in New South Wales have already been given by various authors, as, for example, Brough, McLuckie & Petrie (1924) for the Mt Wilson area, and Fraser & Vickery (1938) for the Upper Williams River district. These papers include detailed accounts of the different communities, but owing to the difficulty of measuring tree height and canopy spread on standing trees, data such as those given by Richards (1936) for the Sarawak forests were not available. In order to obtain detailed information of this kind it was decided to select an area of virgin rain forest and to clear-fell a strip. With the help and co-operation of the New South Wales Forestry Commission a district was chosen in which logging operations were in progress but which still contained untouched forest. Since it was intended to carry out the investigation as part of the normal field exercises undertaken by the senior students in Botany of the University of Sydney,* the simpler Ceratopetalum apetalum (Coachwood) type of forest was chosen. Rain forest of this kind may be considered as a marginal type with a relatively small number of tree species. It adjoins on the one side to eucalyptus (sclerophyll) forests and on the other to the denser and more complicated rain forests with Ficus, Dysoxylum, Diploglottis, Cedrela, etc. The area chosen is situated at approximately 31? 30' S. and 152? E. about 50 miles to the west of Wauchope, and is known locally as Banjo. It is traversed by numerous spurs forming the eastern slopes of the New England Range. Topographically this region is young with narrow ridges, steep-sloping hillsides, and V-shaped gullies.