With bright green leaves and what looks to be manicured foliage on top of a straight trunk, the desert kurrajong looks like a child's drawing of a tree.
Against the dry, arid landscapes of west and central Australia they not only catch your gazing eye, they're also a source of food and water.
They can also point you in the right direction if you're lost.
Crouching beneath the soft, green foliage, Paul Jones touches the rough bark on one side and the soft moss on another side of a desert kurrajong tree.
Then, with pinpoint accuracy, he indicates which way is west and north.
For this reason he calls the desert kurrajong "the compass tree".
The desert kurrajong tree is a bright beacon of vibrant green leaves, a bold contrast against a sea of mottled sage green in Western Australia's arid inland central west.
For Mr Jones of Boogardie Station, a childhood spent in the outback absorbing the knowledge of the "old fellas" has built a wealth of bush botanical knowledge.
"As the sun travels around on the north in the afternoon, the sun is more intense, creating rough bark on the west side of the desert kurrajong," he says.
"Then on the south side, you often get moss growing or it's much smoother on the trunk.
"That's how the compass tree comes into play."
Mustering sheep, or just simply roaming the bush as a child, Adrian Morrissey of Meeline Station — up the road from Mr Jones — says on cloudy days the desert kurrajong trees are a reliable way of navigating a direction home.
"If you're in a paddock that's got no landmark or a hill and the vegetation is fairly high, you can lose your sense of direction," he says.
"As soon as you find a desert kurrajong you can get your perspective back again by looking at the bark."
An outback curiosity
Desert kurrajongs can be found in the western and central parts of Australia.
On closer inspection, their bright-coloured leaves are shaped like an emu's foot and stand out against the other sclerophyll plants and trees in the area.
In summer, when the weather is at its hottest, the leaves become a vibrant green — a stark contrast against the red dirt, rocks and muted tones of the arid Australian bush.
"Who planted the trees out there?"
It's a question often posed by travellers to staff at the Mount Magnet visitor centre.
When told they are a naturally occurring phenomenon, people will remark how out of place they seem.
Loading...But as Paul Jones says, out in the bush everything is connected — the birds, the animals, the plants and trees, all relying on everything being in its right place.
While he knows the desert kurrajong will guide him home, the soft, new leaves of the trees are also used by wedge-tailed eagles to line their homes.
Mr Jones has also noticed that young eagles are often covered by the leaves to hide them from other birds of prey.
"Some birds, like the mudlarks, use feathers, while others like willie wagtails line their nests with spider webs and other things," Mr Jones says.
"Galahs use gumtree leaves and the wedge-tailed eagles use kurrajong leaves.
"They've got the sticks they put together on the outside, but then on the inside, where the chicks are protected, it's soft and cushioned by the leaves."
Loading...The desert kurrajong may be of great help to its environment, but it also looks after itself by being deciduous — losing its precious leaves to prevent water loss in the dry season.
Dave Rowell, an evolutionary geneticist and emeritus professor at Australian National University (ANU), even believes the tree is "facultatively" deciduous, which means it can lose its leaves any time it needs to.
"This is a really good adaptation for an unpredictable climate," he says.
"Basically, if things get too dry or hot they just drop their leaves, which reduces evaporation substantially.
"The other trick they have is that they use photosynthesis through their trunk and branches.
"So even without leaves they can keep ticking over."
The palo verde tree in the Sonoran Desert of North America uses the same strategy — a species totally unrelated to the desert kurrajong.
A tree for all occasions
Raymond Little is a Badimaya elder living in Mount Magnet and refers to desert kurrajongs as kia (gariya) trees.
He grew up surrounded by the trees as he worked on stations on Badimaya country.
"They're special trees, and a lot of old people liked to camp underneath them. They like the shade and the smell of the tree," he says.
Mr Little's early childhood memories are of finding respite from the searing heat under kurrajongs and listening to elders talking.
They are also a source of food and bush medicine.
Seeds can be ground to make damper and leaves boiled and mixed with other ingredients to make bush medicine, Mr Little says.
Aboriginal people often refer to the root section they dig up as yams or ilba.
"Back in the station days, we would walk around and look for the younger trees and dig them up. We would eat the root. It tastes like a pear," Mr Little says.
"They've got a lot of moisture in the roots so when you dig them up you peel the skin off the root, give it a bit of a wash and it's white as."
Professor Pauline Grierson, a botanist and ecologist at the University of WA, says desert kurrajongs' shallow roots store water, allowing them to survive during hot, dry seasons, as well as near heavy salinity at the coast.
"I just love the structure of the desert kurrajongs and their architecture. I think they're just so beautiful and are really different," she says.
"Many people think all the trees that are in the desert are deep-rooted and are only tapping into water that's a long way down.
"That's true for some trees, but it's not true for most of the trees that dominate across those desert environments.
"If you just think about the tropics of Australia, at the top end, aside from the coast, most of it is not permanently wet.
"There are really long periods where it's dry, so some trees need to be able to make it through those dry, hot seasons, and they do this by storing water."
Pastoralist Adrian Morrissey says the yams from desert kurrajong roots taste very sweet, are almost coconut-like in texture and have a lot of moisture.
He says the complex root systems weave fearlessly through the harsh terrain to find moisture and store it in the yams on its roots.
"I've seen a desert kurrajong root with a yam on it by a creek on stony country — this root system was spreading out, but the nearest kurrajong tree was 30 metres away.
"This was probably an extreme case, but the roots obviously go a fair way out from the tree."
A model of futureproof adaption?
Perhaps the secret to its successful desert adaption is that the tree, scientifically known as Brachychiton gregorii, originates from the tropical regions of northern Australia and now lives somewhere far drier.
For his doctorate, Richard Carter carried out a detailed three-year study of the genus Brachychiton at ANU.
This is a group of related species that includes several sorts of kurrajongs as well as a few other iconic Australian trees such as the Queensland bottle tree, the Illawarra flame tree and the Queensland lacebark.
Dr Carter's research indicates there are likely more than 30 Brachychiton species found almost everywhere in Australia, except Tasmania, and two species found in Papua New Guinea.
He says the genus can survive in a wide range of environments, but Brachychiton gregorii is one of the more unusual species.
"As it's moved through the country, it's come across arid and dry areas and found ways to adapt without changing itself too much."
Kurrajong species in the Northern Territory and Kimberley region live in a monsoonal climate, meaning seasonal cycles that go between intense rainfall and intense heat.
Over time, seeds are moved by birds and waterways.
Dr Carter says the process of adapting to a new environment did not happen overnight.
"Some of the offspring of plants, if lucky, might have the right features to survive in that dry, arid environment," he says.
"We are talking thousands of generations over thousands of years.
"This is not a fast process. It's an incremental and slow process."
ANU's Professor Rowell also believes that Brachychiton evolved in northern Australia, but he thinks they spread well before Australia became the dry, arid landscape it is today.
"Australia previously had a quite benign climate, but starting about 500,000 years ago much of the continent began to dry out," he says.
"I suspect that the eastern kurrajong around the east coast, the northern kurrajong in the Kimberley, and the desert kurrajong in the central west were all probably the one species with a continuous distribution."
Dr Carter says not all plant life is as adept at managing a changing climate as North America's palo verde or Australia's desert kurrajong.
"The movement of flora and fauna in response to climate change is [going to be] interesting," he says.
"As the climate changes, are we going to see species adapting to their local environments and making these more selective shifts [fast enough]?
"Or are there going to be big extinctions?"
Credits
- Reporting, photography and video: Chris Lewis
- Producer: Adam Connors