Thread: Widowmakers

When you look at a stand of mature Eucalyptus trees it's not uncommon to see dead straight trunks for a long way up, some of the tall Aussie forests can have trees with no branches at all for the bottom 50m of their trunks. Guess what? They did have branches once. Lots of branches. The amazing abillty of the genus to self prune is also why they are commonly called 'widow makers' in Australia. Unlike Astelia, Euc branches can fall end first, impaling anything underneath very cleanly. There are some horror stories from Australia about people impaled by branches. Big branches are very heavy too, many of them are about 1.3X the weight of water per volume. Big wind here last week and I found some Euc branches impaled into the paddock looking like dead trees 4m tall. I don't go under them during wind events, but unfortunately the branches shed whenever they are ready, not just during wind, so you're not likely to hear it coming.

Eucalyptus have a bad reputation for this but the reality is all trees do the same thing and they can all kill us unexpectedly. You would need to be ludicrously risk averse to not walk into a forest for fear of falling branches.... people also get killed by bits falling off/from aircraft and from the tops of buildings too.