Removing an ~80 year old Tree Fern

Evan Enbom • October 17, 2018

And how to ID which species is in your garden...

Coming to Netflix - the extreme sport of Fern Climbing! It's not every day we get a chance to climb a Tree Fern (which are only very distantly related to trees.) Tree ferns date way back to the Triassic period and are super weird - did you know that ferns have an intermediate growth phase between spore and adult called a Gametophyte that have free swimming sperm? Is that cool or what?!

This guy thinks so!
Anyway, so we had to remove this approx 80 year old Cyathea australis or "Rough tree fern" from a suburban backyard in Korumburra. This old girl had to be removed to fix a fence and also because it'd grown so tall (around 6 metres) that it was exposed to full sun, frost and wind and wasn't in the best of health. Now I can hear all the old mates in the corner clamouring "Why not cut the top off and replant it, ferns regrow if you replant the top fool!!" Let see...

Here's a closeup showing the leaf or 'frond' bases on the trunk of a Cyathea australis similar to the one we removed - you can clearly see how they get their name 'Rough tree fern'. This species CANNOT BE REGROWN from a cut top, it just doesn't work. So to rescue this fern would have required excavating and wrapping a very heavy root ball, and lifting it out from between 2 houses with a large crane. The costs would have been astronomical. So, what sort of tree fern CAN be cut and replanted? See the pic and text below...

By contrast, Dicksonia antarctica or "Soft tree fern" has smooth leaf bases and a fairly soft trunk. These CAN be cut in half and the top replanted. Soft tree ferns (like the ones in Bunnings) all come from old growth forest and may be hundreds of years old. They also grow about twice as slow as Rough tree ferns.

So remember: For cutting and replanting, Soft tree fern YES, Rough tree fern NO.
And the final verdict: What's it like to climb a tree fern? Well, it's like climbing a wet noodle and pretty sketchy (but of course I'd do it again).

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