Botanical name Doryphora sassafras
A common name Sassafras
Seedling
Not yet
Young plant
Juvenile
Reasonably mature
Sassafras
Doryphora sassafras, early on. They are one of those species who know to live for quite some time.
Plenty of Small Leaf Privett here. This little plant is on a South facing hill side not far from the house.
The thin saplings here are some of quite a few in the this location, not far from the bottom of a large gulley, a couple of moderate sized Sassafras just up hill, a West facing hill.
This one is just down from a Syzygium smithii
These 2 well established young trees are part of a colony that stretches along a south facing hill side some 100 metres or so, it used to extend down to Mooral Creek Rd but the survivors down there died in the drought during 2003. One of those 2 I suspect was a resprouting cut log, rather than a seedling growing from underneath the log. The foliage was mature.
Some flowers from a small tree in the same colony, on the Eastern side of a spur running off the ridge the young trees above are growing on. This is cut out of a larger image, maybe I'm discovering I need a more powerful telephoto lense.
This Doryphora sassafras was quite heavily in flower.
A variety of leaves, differing ages and conditions. Until the tree gets somewhat older you will find leaves quite close to ground level even under more closed canopies, though not flowers, they are always a bit higher up.
Doryphora sassafras seems to hold onto its' scars for a while, you can also see this in the flower photo, look for the mark where the leaf stalks fall off the branchlets. You will also see occaisional faint raised rings or ripples, though often they don't encircle the trunk, perhaps semi circular ripples?
The same trunk lower down, the bark is starting to mature. This Sassafras is by no means mature, at least insofar as the size of the trunk. Because the tree coppices it can be a little hard to determine how old it actually is, that is the main trunk can die, from axes, bull dozing, chain sawing or fire and still pop up again. Doryphora sassafras have been known to live for a couple of millenia. I will get some photos of more mature trunks when I get the camera further up the block again.