Eucalyptus leptophylla, regenerating by regrowth from lignotuber, after fire in Billiatt Conservation Park, Murray Mallee. 18 June 2014. Photo: P.J. Lang.

The eucalypts are the epitome of resilience in surviving and regenerating after a bushfire. What first appears to be blackened and destroyed forests of tree trunks, returns as thousands of new shoots all over tree trunks and branches. It is almost without a doubt that the eucalypts have come to dominate Australia with the help of fire, given their ability to quickly recover from it. What do the eucalypts do that many of the other plants don’t, and what can we expect to see happen to eucalypts in the South Australian areas that have been burnt?

First of all, there is more than one way that eucalypts recover from fire. Some species recover by sprouting new leafy shoots all over their trunks and branches. This is called epicormic regrowth and is possible because many eucalypt species have buds buried deep below their bark that are protected from fire. It is triggered by the plant being under stress. Quickly regrowing leaves all over the burnt structure means that it is essentially functioning as a tree again and this is a massive advantage over other plants that have to regenerate from seed, to become a sapling, and then a tree, a process that can take years.

Eucalyptus cladocalyx, regeneration by epicormic regrowth, nearly 3 years after fire in Wanilla Conservation Park, Eyre Peninsula. 24 Sep 2007. Photo: P.J. Lang.

Other eucalypt species grow from lignotubers. A lignotuber is woody swelling at the base of a tree trunk. This structure can often be buried deep within the soil, another way of protecting a plant from fire. While the plant above the ground will be destroyed by a fire, the underground material remains untouched. New shoots appear from the lignotuber and the plant begins growing again from the ground up.

A third way that eucalypts can regenerate is from seed, and some eucalypts can only regenerate this way. This strategy involves plants growing from seedlings into adults, setting seed which falls to the ground and forms a seed bank. A fire then removes the adult plants and new seedlings are generated from the seed bank that then repeat the cycle. The risk of this strategy is that a second fire will occur while plants are seedlings or saplings that haven’t reached a stage to make new seeds, thus removing the species because there is no back-up seed bank. Eucalyptus regnans, the mountain ash of Victoria and Tasmania which is the tallest flowering plant in the world, is an obligate seeder.

Eucalyptus angulosa, regeneration from seed, nearly 3 years after fire in Murrunatta Conservation Park, Eyre Peninsula. Photo P.J.Lang.

With that quick crash course in regeneration strategies of eucalypts we can now turn our attention to South Australian species and what we can expect to see from them after a fire. In 2006 Dean Nicolle from the Currency Creek Arboretum published a paper that summarised the regenerative strategy of every eucalypt species. Below are two tables that are a subset of Dean’s work and give details for each native South Australian eucalypt in the Kangaroo Island (Table 1) and Adelaide Hills (Table 2) 2019/2020 fire zones. (A “combination sprouter”, listed in the tables below, can regenerate from both, epicormic shoots as well as from lignotubers.)

The good news is that not one of those eucalypt species is an obligate seeder and so the threat of a second fire in the next few years removing a species from these areas is not high. The majority of eucalypts in these areas have lignotubers and should successfully regenerate. There are things we need to be observant about though. We think that these fires were extremely hot in some areas, perhaps hotter than has ever been experienced before. While eucalypts are adapted for fire we are uncertain at what maximum temperature plants can survive and regenerate. Past fires have indicated that if the thermal tolerance of species is exceeded then they will not regenerate.

Compiled by State Herbarium botanists Andrew Thornhill and Peter Lang.

Table 1. Regeneration strategies of eucalypts of Kangaroo Island.

Table 2. Regeneration strategies of eucalypts from the Adelaide Hills.