Serenaded by lyrebird under southern sassafras

The Southern Sassafras, indeed any sassafras, has always had a romantic connotation to me. I think it dates back to my fascination with Tasmania and its (what I always thought of as) pristine forests. Or maybe my mistaken assumption at the time that it was the plant used to flavour sarsaparilla.

In flower it is a striking tree, as you can see form the picture above, looking across to the top of a 15 to 20 metre high specimen in full bloom. Those tiny splashes of white are the flowers.

The 'true' Sassafras, the one carrying this as botanical name, is from the Northern Hemisphere. That genus is classified in Lauraceae, a plant family also including cinnamon, bay laurel and avocado.

Our Australian Sassafras are in their own family, the rather long-named, Atherospermataceae. This family includes seven genera, one of them Atherosperma, with a single species, Atherosperma moschatum - our Southern Sassafras. It grows from Tasmania right up to about Port Macquarie in New South Wales.

There is another well-known Australian tree in this family, from subtropical and warm temperate rainforests of New South Wales and Queensland, called the Yellow Sassafras, or botanically Doryphora sassafras.

The Northern Hemisphere Sassafras and our Atherosperma and Doryphora are not so very different. Their two families are grouped together in what call an order (the next major grouping above family) called Laurales. 

That said, the members of the order Laurales don't share any obvious characters that you and I can see - its circumscribed these days using DNA sequences.

So let's focus now on the Southern Sassafras, also sometimes know as the Blackheart Sassafras, which I assumed (and I think read) was on account of the red or purple colours inside some flowers. My usually more reliable colleague Neville Walsh, tells me blackheart is in fact a reference to the dark heartwood revealed when logs are cut, a consequence of staining fungal infections.

The tree as a whole though is more white than black. You can see the frosty white undersurface of the leaves in this next picture. Which reminds me that its oft said that the reason the flowers hand downwards is to stop them filling with snow.

Those flowers are not unlike what we now understand were the earliest flowers to evolve. As I wrote in the June issue of Gardening Australia magazine, in an article titled 'Jurassic Garden':

"The first flowers were only 1 cm across, with a cluster of white tepals surrounding groups of male and female parts. The tepals – floral parts that could be considered either petals or sepals – were in whorls of three, with three or four whorls per flower. Picture something like a mix of current-day
bay laurel, magnolia and buttercup."

Southern Sassafras flowers are about one to two centimetres across, with two whorls of four 'tepals' embracing a large number of either stamens (in male flowers) or carpels (ovary and associated bits in female flowers), or both (in flowers that are bisexual). If separate male and female flowers, I gather on separate plants - that is, a male plant with male flowers and female plant with female flowers.

The flowers in all my images above are male, with 12 stamens. The female flowers are a little smaller, with two or three rings of flattened 'staminodes' (sterile stamens) around a gathering of tuft of apparently 30 carpels. The next few pictures show older male flowers with anthers having released their pollen through valves at the side (which fascinates some botanists and is characteristic of some Laurales).

The bark is, like the Northern Hemisphere sassafras, is aromatic and the leaves have a nutmeg odor when crushed. The flowers are also perfumed, quite sweetly. But it's the root of the Northern Hemisphere plant that is used to flavour traditional root beer and sarsaparilla - along with a few other herbs and spices. 

Now, these pictures were taken in the Dandenong Ranges, back in July, near to where I saw the orchid and fern featured last week. I also saw, and heard, a rather special animal, the Superb Lyrebird (Menura novaehollandiae).

While I don't often stray into the zoological universe, unless to illustrate a pollinator or seed spreader, I can't resist a picture and a sound file. In any case, the lyrebird is well known soil cultivator and disperser of fungi. The sassafras seeds are feathery and well suited for drifting in the wind, but I wouldn't be surprised if lyrebirds help settle the seed in when it lands.

This is the male, perched on a mossy limb, 'singing'. Next is his mate, (in the nest), listening.

And this is what he 'sang'. Do take a listen. As you will no doubt be aware, the lyrebird imitates other birds (and other noises) it hears around him. So all bird songs in this recording are made by the male lyrebird. If you listen carefully, you'll hear, in this order: kookaburra, cockatoo, lyrebird!, scrubwren, whip bird - male then female, grey thrush, crimson rosella, black cockatoo, and finally (I'm told) his dance song.