With over 700 species of eucalypts alone, Australia possesses an amazing variety of trees. During our travels, Vilis and I have been enchanted by brilliant white ghost gums clinging to red rock walls in the desert near Alice Springs, and by strangler figs ensnaring host trees in Queensland’s rainforests. We’ve been startled by the profuse green growth regenerating on gums scorched in last year’s Black Saturday bushfires, and gazed a long way up into the canopies of swamp gums – the world’s tallest flowering plants – towering above us in the cool, wet forests of the Styx Valley in Tasmania. The savannah surrounding Townsville incorporates a collage of often kinky-trunked gum species including ironbarks, bloodwoods, poplar gums, and others, with the smooth, whitish bark of the poplar gums acting as a perfect foil to the deeply-furrowed, almost black exteriors of the ironbarks. During our 2000-kilometre drive to Alice Springs, the tree composition of east and central Queensland’s vast expanses of savannah seemed to change continually, staving off driving boredom for me and instilling a tremendous respect for the unparalleled success of the genus Eucalyptus. Then, we entered the territory of the mulgas, species of Acacia that tolerate the heat, drought, and rocky soil in sites where even the mighty gums can’t survive. Today’s post is a collection of portraits of Aussie trees, some featuring a single tree, and others featuring a stand composed of one species. Most of the species we could name, but a few enchanted us without revealing their identities.